Trilogia: Ressons de Babel, Paraules Guarnides by Fumiko Gotô

In the exhibition Trilogia: Ressons de Babel, Paraules Guarnides Fumiko Gotô explores language not only as a means of communication but as sensory, symbolic, and visual experience. Through three distinct yet interwoven series ENCLOSED, SERIF, and TACTILE, her work investigates how words resonate beyond speech and adornment conveys meaning across cultural and perceptual boundaries.
 
In ENCLOSED ancient Japanese poetic exchange and ritual packaging traditions meld to become art jewellery. Each brooch contains handwritten Makura Kotoba–a poetic epithet from classical Waka–sealed within folded Washi paper and preserved with Urushi lacquer. Inspired by the long-lost practice of Origata, an art of packaging, these brooches echo intimate messages once exchanged by lovers, enclosing fragments of poems related to the five senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell as well as the sixth sense of mind consciousness.
 
SERIF plumbs the depths of the visual language of typography, revealing how the form itself of a letter serves to embellish, elevate, or even transform conventions of signifying. The inherent aesthetic voice of writing resounds demonstrating how adorned letters communicate more profoundly.
 
In TACTILE language becomes something to be touched. Texts, poems, and proverbs drawn from various languages and cultures are rendered in Braille. Communication becomes embodied, suggesting that connotation often operates beneath the surface, accessible through a graze, a grasp, a caress.
 
Together these three parts form a trilogy, poetic echoes where significance splinters and multiplies yet still finds form through material, memory, and ornament.
 
Trilogy: Echoes of Babel, Adorned Words invites you to experience language not only as something to be read or heard, but also as art jewellery to be touched, sensed by the mind, and alluringly worn on your body.

The exhibition presents a total of 20 brooches and is Fumiko Gotô’s third solo show at Hannah Gallery, a return we welcome with joy and reverence, once again giving space to her delicate yet powerful voice in the language of art jewellery.