Casa Asia presents the exhibition project by the artist Esther Pizarro and curated by Menene Gras Balaguer, consisting of the creation of a Japanese garden, understood as a copy of natural landscape and the construction of a cultural identity. This project brings together the expression of a milennial tradition represented in the figure of a “Japanese Garden” and its validity in the work of architects and landscapists that have adopted as a role their aesthetic ideology, such as Tadao Ando, Isamo Noguchi, Toyo Ito, Kengo Kuma and Shigeru Ban.

It consists of a unique installation of great visual impact, with an area of 500 m² (Puríssima Pavilion of Sant Pau’s Modernist Venue) and reproduces the topography of the Japanese country through its political division in 8 regions and 47 administrative prefectures. These regions are represented as islands (‘topographies of void’), which are demarcated by sculptore containers where the vegetation rests in a symbolic manner. It reflects social and urban changes of contemporary Japan.

The eight structures have continuity and visitants can move around a sea of salt, as if it was in the inside of a living organism. This tour is completed, in addition, with the reproduction of the wave sound, breeze and sea birds, which turns it into a sensorial experience that allows reflection on affective and emotional relationships associated to the geography of the most traditional Japanese garden.

This is a project of Casa Asia and Matadero Madrid.