いずみなつみ作品集

Profile

Artist Statement

私は、書を言語表現ではなく、「記録構造」を扱うメディウムとして制作している。

私にとって記録とは、過去を保存するためのものではない。記録は、未来の可能性を生成する構造である。生命は遺伝子を継承し、個人は経験を記憶として蓄積し、文化や国家は言語や制度を通して情報を受け継ぐ。それぞれは対象やスケールこそ異なるが、情報を保存し、変質させ、新たな可能性を生み出すという共通した構造を持つ。

私はこの構造を「フラクタルな記録構造」と捉え、宇宙から生命、国家、文化、身体、文字までを、同一の原理が異なるレイヤーに現れたものとして制作している。

書は、人間というレイヤーにおいて記録構造を扱うためのメディウムである。文字は意味を伝達するためだけの記号ではなく、身体が経験した時間を未来へ受け渡す痕跡でもある。そのため私の作品では、文字は可読と不可読の境界に置かれ、鑑賞者は読むのではなく、自らの内部に蓄積された記憶や経験を参照しながら意味を生成することになる。

核物理学、天文学、生物学、言語学など異なる領域を横断しながら、最終的には日本の書という身体的な実践へ帰結することが、私の制作の特徴である。

私の関心は、存在そのものではない。

存在が、どのような記録を受け継ぎ、どのような痕跡を書き加え、その蓄積によって未来を生成し続けるのか。その構造を、書というメディウムを通して可視化することを試みている。

略歴 / Selected Exhibitions

コミッションワーク / Commissioned Works

IZUMI Natsumi

Contemporary artist. Rooted in shodo (Japanese calligraphy), her research-based practice crosses language, memory, the body, and collective identity.

Profile

Artist Statement

My practice reconsiders writing not as a vehicle for language, but as a medium for investigating the structures through which information is recorded, inherited, and transformed.

Rather than understanding records as systems for preserving the past, I approach them as structures that generate future possibilities. DNA transmits biological information, memory shapes individual experience, writing externalizes human thought, while culture and political systems carry collective knowledge across generations. Although these systems operate at different scales, they share a common principle: information is inherited, transformed, and becomes the condition for new forms of existence.

I understand this recurring principle as a fractal structure of recording—a self-similar pattern that appears across different layers of reality, from the cosmos to biological life, from nations and cultures to the human body and written language. These layers are not separate phenomena, but different manifestations of the same underlying structure.

Within this framework, calligraphy is not simply a method of writing. It is a medium through which the human body inscribes irreversible traces into the world. Working exclusively with ink and paper, I use the physical act of writing to investigate how records are accumulated, how they dissolve, and how they continually generate new possibilities.

My earlier works explored biological systems of recording, including DNA, neurons, and synaptic networks, by superimposing written language onto diagrams of living structures. More recent works extend this investigation toward collective memory, examining how language, war, political systems, and cultural narratives shape the formation and dissolution of communities. My latest projects further expand this inquiry to a cosmic scale, considering the universe itself as the largest structure within which all traces of existence are continuously recorded.

Many of my works exist at the threshold between legibility and illegibility. Rather than presenting language as a fixed system of meaning, they invite viewers to construct meaning through their own accumulated memories and experiences. In this sense, the work does not communicate meaning; it activates the structures through which meaning is generated.

Born in Hiroshima, I grew up inheriting memories of war that I never personally experienced. This awareness—that records shape individuals across generations before they become conscious of them—forms the foundation of my practice.

Ultimately, I see existence not as a fixed entity but as an ongoing process in which inherited records are continually rewritten, generating new possibilities for the future. Through contemporary calligraphy, I seek to make this process visible.

Selected Exhibitions

Commissioned Works