Scene de la table, Paris, 2014

This artwork was created to mark the launch of Discover Japan Magazine, a Japanese cultural media platform, in Paris. Developed with the support of Mino pottery ware, the project explored how Japanese traditions could be translated into contemporary culture. What if an entire building façade could be used like a giant billboard? This question led to the glass façade of the Maison de la Culture du Japon à Paris, although no intervention to the building itself was permitted. Large textile surfaces embedded with ceramics temporarily occupied the façade like urban graffiti while leaving the building untouched. Hanging elements weighing more than 20 kg without a single screw required a custom structural system. Clinging to the existing mullions through compression and friction alone, this engineering design became the project's real hero—but in the end, we had to hide it ourselves. The composition appears as a random graphic pattern. Yet this apparent randomness is a familiar sight on a Japanese dining table, where dishes of different sizes are freely shared. Titled Scène de la Table, the project transforms a quality often found in Japanese culture into a graphic message: what first appears disordered is, in fact, organized by an invisible order.

Photo : Takeshi Miyamoto