"To touch the earth gathered from the land of Ousia
is to imagine the landscape that once existed here.
The sunlight reflected upon the water,
the colors of the earth stretching into the distance—
I wonder if the days once lived by someone on this land
were as beautiful as the day before us now.
To contemplate the memories held within the soil
is to deepen our love for the landscape before us.
And I believe that this quiet warmth
enriches the lives we are living today. "
For our first exhibition of 2026, coinciding with the first anniversary of Ousia, we are pleased to present a special exhibition by Emi Suzuki, an artist whose work is created using mud and earth.
For this exhibition, Suzuki has created works using soil gathered from the land on which Ousia stands.
Rather than replacing what is old with something new,
we believe in carrying forward what has existed before us—
in reinterpreting it, reshaping it,
and allowing it to remain in a new form.
With this idea in mind, we approached Emi Suzuki in the hope of giving tangible form to this philosophy.
During the renovation of Ousia, we had carefully preserved soil from this land. Suzuki agreed to transform that soil into works of art, and from this encounter, the exhibition came into being.
Exactly one year after Ousia first opened its doors, we will present works born from the earth of this place—earth that has quietly held the history and passage of time accumulated here, now transformed and given new life through art.
The character of soil differs from place to place.
Its texture, color, and composition seem almost like a landscape of memory, shaped by the long passage of time and the history held within the land.
Emi Suzuki’s works are created through a repeated process:
hardening the mud, carving it, drawing upon it, hardening it again, carving it again—
Through this act of repetition, surfaces gradually emerge that evoke layers of earth formed and accumulated over immense stretches of time.
Her works carry both the elemental force of the earth
and the unmistakable presence of the human hand.
From the soil of this particular place,
and only because of this place,
a special body of work between Emi Suzuki and Ousia has come into being.
The works possess a curious sense of belonging—
as though they had always existed here.
We warmly invite you to visit the exhibition
and experience this quiet connection between the land, its memories, and the present.
