Manami Ishimura

Thousands of Crane

Manifest

Statement

Thousands of Cranes is an installation in which audiences are invited to break ceramic origami cranes and replacing them with a new origami paper. In Japan, there is a ritual where people fold a thousand origami cranes for a person who is sick or in some other bad situation. Once they are better, they bring the origami to a Shinto shrine and burn it for purification. Thousands of Cranes is an appreciation of the universal cultural activity that represent hope for a long life along with a ritual, while simultaneously, the acceptance of laws of nature through the process.

My artwork emphasizes purification through fire by covering origami paper with porcelain slip and firing it as a canvas and shows it as a metaphor of forgiveness of the world. The ceramic cranes become glazed differently depending upon the atmospheres in a soda kiln. Through this process, the firing is a reminder of the whole phenomenon of the ritual where the original paper cranes are burned at a shrine.

Ceramics will be broken one day. The ephemeral materials have been developing through being broken and being created by human’s hands. Exhibiting at Manifest during the 2021 NCECA conference provided an occasion that resonates with what ceramics belongs. Not only NCECA member but also participants personally experience the natural dynamism by engaging with a fragile object and the ephemeral life’s beauty that other cultures also have.