Circumference of the Sun

Solo exhibition Heritage Museum of Asian Art 

November 15, 2025 - January 15, 2026
 

Circumference of the Sun is a solo exhibition that considers the body through cultural, material, and temporal archives via photographic avenues and techniques. Mythological ancestry and technical etymology converge in this exhibition through visual, formal, temporal, and process-based series of works that propose the various configurations between the body, light, photography, and the sun. The sun is a central entity in Japanese culture and mythology. The origin story recounts the lineage of Japanese people to the Shinto goddess of the sun, Amaterasu. Photography means “drawing with light” and is now the word used to describe the general process of exposing light upon light-sensitive materials. Another word was once proposed to also describe this process: photogene, meaning “produced by light.” Light-produced and descending from light, like the people of Japan. 

 

Photography facilitated the collection of objects, likeness of people, and memories of places, creating a new system of visual information and archiving. Questions around methods of archival collections are addressed in the work A Japanese Girl, where notions of cultural biases are challenged through an eschewing of the frontal gaze in an artist-expanded archive. The activation of archives continues with 35mm slides coming from the Heritage Museum collection in conversation with Aoki’s own photographs. Ceramic chopstick rests inspired by softer forms of prehistoric sculptures propose sculptural imprints as an afterimage.

 

A lenseless process is used in photograms of the artist's signature bun, which mark the accumulation of the artist’s time in the darkroom. Sun-reliant cyanotypes present technical correlations between photography and the sun. 213 frames –the exact number of 16mm frames equal to the artist’s height– is arranged in a circle, transforming the artist's body into the circumference of the sun. The artist, a descendant of light (the sun), draws images of and with the body, through the photographic medium, as variations of light-images. 

 

Circumference of the Sun is one of three exhibitions by Japanese and Japanese American artists created in response to More Things Japanese. Curated by JI Yang.

Signature Bun

2020 - ongoing, gelatin silver prints
The ongoing Signature Bun series are photograms made before each printing session. Made with a flashlight and paper held behind the artist’s hair, this forever expanding collection of photograms turns a fundamental darkroom process into archival markers of time. These abstract photograms are always hung at the artist’s height, creating a dual lexicon of the artist’s portrait: the body defined through its absence, and the repeating yet abstract visual moniker of a messy, signature hairdo. For this exhibition the prints have been hung at the height of the artist when sitting on the exhibition room sofa.
 

[artist’s hair hung at artist height] 

 

箸置き [chopstick rests]

ceramic, 2025
Chopstick rests with indentation made from the artist's finger. The hand-rolled chopstick rests are   Artifacts from an archeological dig

 

Shibori // 絞り

Cyanotypes on organic Japanese cotton, 2019
Shibori or 絞り染め (shiborizome) is one of the oldest Japanese indigo dye processes dating back to the 8th century, involving folding or squeezing the fabric to create patterns. The name comes from the Japanese word shiboru, meaning to wring. In Japanese, shibori is also the word used for camera aperture. The cyanotype images are made by grasping the fabric in the manner of the shibori technique, showing the gradual enlargement of the hand aperture. 

 

[postage stamps from artist’s personal collection & museum collection]
 

8.875 III
213 frames of red 16mm leader, resin, 2025
The third sculptural iteration of the work 8.875 organizes 213 16mm frames into a circle. 213 frames has a run time of 8.875 seconds when projected as a moving image and matches exactly the artist’s height of 164cm. The red circle on the white wall subtly recreates the Japanese flag, transforming the artist's body into the circumference of the sun.
 

[artist’s seal]
Name stamp of artist

 

Diptych Diptych: KA x HMAA
2025
Gelatin silver prints from artist & slides from HMAA collection
Left: Image from series Opalesque Arabesque & museum slides

RIght: museum slide and portrait of artist by Alex Wurzel

 

KA x HMAA II

The KA x HMAA section presents 35mm slide box sets produced by Japanese Nippon Bunka Film Co. and a separate set of 35mm slides from the Heritage Museum of Asian Art collection. These slides offer an abbreviated introduction to Japanese culture and traditions to a foreign audience, which in turn opens additional questions about the shortcomings of cultural indexing. The museum collection is supplemented by slides and photographs from the artist’s personal archive. 

A Japanese Girl
Double-sided frames with cabinet card from Slemmons collection, portraits of artist (gelatin silver print, Polaroid, Fuji instant film) and found photographs, 2025

A series of double-sided frames that considers the cultural biases present within archival practices. Responding to an original cabinet card with a handwritten note “A Japanese Girl” on the back side, this series expands the archive with portraits of the artist and found photographs that eschew the frontal gaze.This gesture reevaluates preconceived impressions of the image of a Japanese girl and presents a different visual narrative: the traditional Japanese updo hairstyles and the “signature bun,” a recognizable feature of the artist.
 

Moonrise

Gelatin silver print, p.2025