Shiori ICHIKAWA / 市川 詩織

When I exhibit my work, I am often asked, "Why don't you paint humans?" Perhaps it is because viewers, while looking at my works, sense the presence of human beings—despite their absence in the images. That interpretation is right on target. My work is, in fact, deeply about humanity. And yet, I choose not to depict humans directly. Unlike other living beings, humans have language—a tool that, while facilitating communication, can sometimes obscure the essence of what I wish to convey.

When we try to understand the emotions of non-human creatures, we have no way of knowing what they truly think or why they act as they do. The differences in our physical structures prevent us from sharing a common language. In that space of uncertainty, all we can do is engage in an affectionate, yet ultimately inconclusive, act of imagination—wondering what they feel, what they think, or what might have happened to them. Some may see this as a futile exercise. But I do not. That feeling we experience when we imagine—the strange sensation of warmth, of joy and sorrow washing over us all at once—is something we have all felt at least once in our lives.

Language, in its effort to structure and share our experiences with others, inevitably involves compromise. It is an incredibly useful tool that has driven human progress, but at the same time, no one can ever be certain whether one person's experience of "sadness" is truly identical to another's. If we could share that unspoken, deeply affectionate emotion—beyond words, beyond cultures, beyond religions—and recognize it in each other, I believe it could be one of the keys to navigating this world, which so often seems to be heading down a path of despair.

I choose painting and printmaking—not literature, not film—because they serve as vessels to carry something beyond language.

As an artist living in the present day, I believe that those who encounter my work and receive a seed of possibility will nurture that unspoken something, discover their own meaning, and spread it in their own way—just like the sun in The North Wind and the Sun.