Imagine a sensation where the boundary of one’s skin dissolves, and the body melds with the environment - where the inner self and the outer world become seamlessly connected. It is a feeling that evokes a deep, comforting empathy, along with a reverent awe toward an invisible force that seems to engulf the individual. Beauty emerges from both.

Yuka MORI’s paintings, created using traditional materials of Japanese painting, explore the blurred boundaries and tactile sensations between humans and plants, self and other, the tangible and the intangible. Her work draws from Buddhist philosophy and Eastern conceptions of the body, while also incorporating motifs rooted in Western painting, resulting in a unique worldview that transcends the categories of East and West.

In recent years, MORI’s fascination with the physicality of plants and their ecology has deepened. In her latest series, she depicts the unseen interconnections and ever-expanding networks among plants, humans, and all things that make up the world, like threads woven into a vast web. The sincerity with which she engages her own bodily awareness and its relationship with the world feels like an act of recovering the primordial bodily sensations that modern life causes us to forget as we grow older.