In June 2026, Yasuaki Kuroda’s solo exhibition “Utterance of Plants” is being held at biscuit gallery in Shinjuku.
Upon entering the exhibition space, what first catches the eye is 130 spools of thread arranged neatly on the floor. As if responding to the call of plant names, each stands in its own distinct hue. The artist’s interest in the idea that textiles, before written language, served the role of “language” seemed to permeate the space itself.
The Title “Utterance of Plants”
The exhibition title “Utterance of Plants” derives from a worldview known as “草木言語ふ (the utterance of plants)” found in the Nihon Shoki and Shinto prayers. The primordial world in which all things were said to converse with one another — Kuroda has translated that lost voice into the colors of plant-dyed thread, approximately 200 colors in total.
Even with the same plants, the colors that emerge differ depending on the land where they grew, the climate, and the time of harvest. Each color carries within it both the time the plant has traversed and the memory of the earth where it took root. Color is itself the very trace of the plant’s continuity with the world.
Exhibition Layout — A Continuum of Dye, Colored Thread, and Weaving
At the center of the exhibition are large-scale panel works and installations made with dyed thread. On the gallery floor are 130 spools of thread representing 130 of the approximately 200 colors used in the works.
The dyeing process normally confined to the atelier — the plants themselves that have become dye, the accumulation of boiled and colored threads, and the final woven work — is opened within the exhibition space as a continuous flow. It is less about “showing” the work than it is a design that “welcomes visitors into” the artist’s world.
About the Artist
Yasuaki Kuroda is a visual artist and textile dyer who questions how we perceive our world by hand-weaving silk thread dyed with plants. By boiling plants, dyeing silk thread, and weaving, he examines fundamental connections. Before written language emerged, textiles served as a language, binding humans and the world as one continuum. Kuroda’s practice is an attempt to return to this primordial language of textiles and to reconsider the relationship between humans and the world.
— Excerpt from biscuit gallery official statement
The artist performs every process by hand, from dyeing to weaving. This continuous handwork manifests in the exhibition space as a single utterance — such is this exhibition.
For inquiries and purchases, please contact biscuit gallery.
