Year: 2023
Medium: glass
Dimensions: 52.5 x 41 x 45.5 cm (20 5/7 x 16 1/8 x 18 in.)
Acquired from ShugoArts, 2023
In a comment at the exhibition, Mishima stated that she expressed “the form of prayer.” When people pray, they may raise their thoughts towards God or saints in catholic Italy, or to gods and Buddha or ancestral spirits in Japan. Since these prayers and thoughts do not have visible forms, they are indeed difficult to shape. Mishima seeks to find a “form” that cannot be seen by the eye. The highly transparent Venetian glass that Mishima uses is a colorless and transparent substance, in which its nature can be said to be a mark to a certain extent. The mere presence of the glass pieces, which visually and strongly assert a hard and heavy materiality, also possesses a certain thinness that allows light to penetrate easily. It is through glass, containing both visible and invisible areas, that may be able to express “the form of prayer.” “Fenice” is the Italian word for phoenix. This work is pleated, resembling overlapping ribs or feathers. It exudes a dynamism as if the candy-like viscosity of the glass forming process was fixed in place, and it seems ready to move at any moment. By repeatedly throwing itself into the fire and reviving from the ashes, the phoenix has been given the name of immortality. In Christianity, it has also been depicted as a symbol of resurrection. Glass is produced exactly from silica sand and ashes (soda ashes). What was once a mineral is melted by fire and mixed with the ashes to be resurrected into a new form. Is it possible to truly see the “form” that is nothing but reincarnated by Mishima? If this unseen “form” is expressing an invisibility like a “prayer,” would it be a contradiction?
