maira shimada
嶋田舞良馨

Gathering Geographies Darren Knight Gallery
Curated by Mara Schwerdtfeger


“An exhibition questioning how the Earth's movements shape how we gather, act, and move through space.”


In this series of works the process of preparing bread is world-building, and an emulation of earth's natural processes. I could talk about how we look at a field of wheat and see the words 'wheat, flour, bread'. What we don't see is that these words are actually round - like spheres - each another 'earth' containing, with implications and the ability to respond. Isn't earth built of responses? I create an environment, specific, in order for the sour to respond in a way that ultimately I can only hope to design. I think a lot about water (life's enabling), and warm versus cool (wherever be the sun), and the presence of salt (like the sea), and I begin to move in tandem with this herd of organisms.
Another question was, where are the gods and spirits? Bread coming from wheat, a crop, has a strong spiritual association to any people with agricultural traditions; think of harvest, drought, flood, and the forces behind them. At practise recently for Onikenbai/鬼剣舞 (a dance, from Iwate 岩崎、Kitakami 北上), someone pointed out that perhaps more than skywards, our/my spirits are earth and water bound; they reside in the ground, that region beyond our physically "horizontal existence". That is with the roots, the nutrient material, where the water goes, and we coat the surface of their world.


‘Wasser Musik’ (water music)
emmer flour, rye flour, water, extra virgin olive oil, sour culture, salt, tomato, olives
february 2022



photographs above by the artist





photographs above by Zoe Baumgartner


process