Hitoshi Yagi

Create a photo collage to capture memories of the places you’ve been.

Hitoshi Yagi is exploring new visual expressions through collage techniques, with a central theme of “What is a place to belong?”

His creative journey was ignited by an experience he had while appreciating a Japanese garden. The Obai-in Temple of Daitoku-ji Temple in Kyoto is a beautiful temple with seasonal scenery and a moss garden. At this point, several fallen leaves on the moss caught his eye. They were just a collection of fallen leaves, but they created the flow of time throughout the garden. Isuien Garden in Nara is a strolling garden designated as a place of scenic beauty. The view of Mt. Wakakusa in the distance and the adjacent Nandaimon gate of Todaiji Temple made the garden feel much larger. What Yagi experienced in these Japanese gardens was the feeling of “being part of the whole.” Taking this feeling as a clue, he is currently developing collage works using the city as a motif.

There are many strangers in the city, each moving toward their own goals. Buildings are also continuing to change into scrap-and-build structures without us even realizing it. He attempts to visually express a place of belonging by layering the temporality and spatiality of a Japanese garden on a cityscape.