Artist Highlight - Fumika Tani

1. TSUGI reinterprets the Japanese Kasuri tradition through British wool and locally sourced dyes. How does working between these two material cultures shape the structure of the textile?

Working between Japanese and British material cultures reshapes the structure of the textile itself. Kasuri traditionally emerged from regional fibres and dyes tied to everyday life. By weaving British wool with dyes derived from local domestic remnants, the material logic shifts while the structural principles remain. This tension creates a textile that is neither purely Japanese nor British, but something negotiated between the two. The structure becomes a site of translation where fibres, colour systems, and cultural histories intersect through the act of weaving.

2. The title TSUGI suggests continuation, connection, and inheritance. How do these ideas guide the development of the series?

The word TSUGI carries several meanings in Japanese: to connect, to continue, and to inherit. These ideas guide the series as both method and philosophy. Rather than preserving a tradition exactly as it was, the work asks how it can continue under different materials, environments, and cultural contexts. Each textile becomes a moment of transition where inherited techniques encounter new conditions. In this sense, the work is less about preservation than about continuity through change.

3. Your dyes are derived from everyday remnants such as red wine and peppermint tea. What interests you about transforming these domestic residues into colour?

I am interested in how colour can emerge from the overlooked residues of everyday life. Materials such as red wine or peppermint tea are normally associated with consumption and disappearance. Through dyeing, these remnants become visible again as colour embedded within fibre. This transformation reveals hidden cycles within domestic life, where waste can be reimagined as material. The process also reconnects colour to place and time, as each dye carries traces of daily habits and local environments.

4. Kasuri involves carefully planned resist patterns that emerge during weaving. How do you negotiate control and unpredictability within this process?

Kasuri requires careful planning, yet the final pattern only fully emerges during weaving. I find this balance between intention and uncertainty central to the process. The resist-dyed threads carry a structure that I design beforehand, but small shifts always occur as the warp and weft intersect. Rather than eliminating this unpredictability, I allow it to remain visible. These subtle variations give the textile a sense of life, reminding us that tradition is never completely fixed.

5. Within The Invisible Made Visible, your work highlights overlooked material cycles. What aspects of transformation or process do you hope viewers become more aware of when encountering this textile?

The work highlights processes that normally remain invisible within textiles. Dyeing, fibre transformation, and structural construction often disappear once a textile becomes a finished object. By working with unusual dyes and emphasising the weaving structure, I hope viewers become more aware of the layered processes embedded in cloth. The textile becomes a record of transformations: plant matter becoming colour, thread becoming structure, and everyday materials entering a new material cycle.