“Stone Garden” is an iron sculpture created during my 2025 residency in Bandung, Indonesia. While I was deeply captivated by the overwhelming beauty of volcanoes, lakes, and waterfalls, I also confronted the reality of garbage-filled streets, revealing the city’s contradictions and fragility. This striking contrast became the origin of the work. On site, I made sketches before nature, then bent iron rods to trace those spontaneous lines in space, giving them three-dimensional form. The iron lines do not merely serve as formal elements; they embody intangible sensations such as light, air, and smell, reflecting insights I received from the place itself. By evoking the vivid presence of nature, the contradictions of the city are highlighted, and this tension resonates with cultural contexts. In Japan, Shinto has long revered nature, while in Indonesia, Islam shapes daily life, with communal practices sustaining unique ties to the natural world. This work seeks to explore the “gaze toward nature” that emerges at the intersection of these perspectives, questioning anew the human relationship with nature.

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Stone Garden is an iron sculpture that emerged from a 2025 residency in Bandung, Indonesia. While captivated by the overwhelming beauty of volcanoes, lakes, and waterfalls, I also encountered streets overflowing with waste and the contradictions and fragility of the city. This vivid contrast became the starting point for the work. I made repeated sketches in front of natural landscapes, then bent iron from those spontaneous lines and developed them three-dimensionally, as if drawing in space. The iron lines register intangible sensations such as light, air, and scent, giving form to realizations received from the land. Rendering nature also brings the city's contradictions into sharper relief, and this tension connects to cultural backgrounds: in Japan through Shinto reverence for nature, and in Indonesia through Islamic forms of community. The work was an attempt to reconsider our “relationship with nature” at the point where these perspectives intersect.