KYOKO IBE'S concept of her practice as an art of rebirth and renewal has come into its own, giving fresh significance to the old idea of kankonshi (“paper with its soul brought back to life”) that “expresses and revives our shared human skill and compassion.”
Born in Nagoya, in 1941, Kyoko Ibe first worked with washi-traditional Japanese hand-made paper-during the 1960s. She is now one of Japan's most senior and respected artists in the medium, creating site-specific installations and theater sets that can fill large architectural spaces, as well as more domestic-scale panels and folding screens fashioned out of dyed and pulped antique documents originally brushed with handwriting in sumi ink.