March 2 – April 16, 2023
The Griffin Museum is pleased to introduce Yukimi Akiba showcasing her unique work Timeless Knot.
Timeless Knot is the first project after Yukimi stepped away from self-portraits using Polaroids. Focusing on unknown women (in vintage postcards) who lived and died in the past, and using countless French Knot stitches that looks like blooming colorful threads.
Akiba takes time to “talk” with all the creatures in the vintage photographs, and carefully stitch and revive them, stitch by stitch, with a great amount of respect towards the portrait sitter, the original print and us as viewers of the work.
Yukimi Akiba lives in Japan, working with mixed media and embroidery as her main medium. She created a series of Polaroid self-portraits, Creative ‘Self’ Destruction, from 2019-2021. Her work played an important role as a way to reconstruct what she lost in her life due to illness and trauma, which led to her current style that allows her to relate herself to others and reality.
Since spring 2019 Yukimi Akiba has thrown herself into her creative/emotional world but isolated herself from people and the real world instead. For Yukimi, art played an important role as therapy for illness, a way of not physically harming herself or others, a way of rebuilding what she had lost in her life by trauma, and now it helps relate her and the realities.
To see more of Yukimi’s work, log onto her website. You can find her on Instagram @ykm_12.44_