Exhibition “Mika Takahashi: Solar Rain”

We don't usually grab an umbrella when the sky is clear, but it's wise to be wary of the calm blue sky. Suddenly, even when the sun is still shining, a few drops pierce the clouds and fall on us, as if the sky had decided to whisper water amidst the light. Some explain the phenomenon: it could be what's called solar rain, winds from a distant storm carrying errant drops to a place where there were no clouds. But there are also those who prefer another narrative. Stories that carry legends and myths of popular origin, often rooted in Eastern cultures and the beliefs of villages and cities. It is believed that such expressions arose as ways of attributing meaning – often through mystical or supernatural imagery – to events that seemed to escape everyday understanding, such as certain natural phenomena and the vagaries of the world.

In Japanese folklore, it is said that when it rains and the sun shines, foxes are on the loose. The kitsune no yomeiri (狐の嫁入り) is a silent procession of kitsune that traverses the day, illuminated by a long line of kitsunebi stretching across a vast area. The dialectic between sun and rain evokes the meeting of opposites in nature: opposing forces that coexist and complement each other, generating balance and renewal. This phenomenon permeates imaginations in both the West and the East, carrying a rich constellation of meanings. It is precisely within this interweaving that Mika Takahashi operates, translating the tension of nature and poetry with delicacy and precision in the exhibition. Solar rain.

It is between impermanence and fabulation that Mika She develops her most recent pictorial research, experiencing the world through the senses and dreams. The artist uses fiction as a way to approach different realities, understanding the unconscious not as an escape, but as a tool for investigation and sensitivity. In this process, fabulation transcends the dimension of literary research and asserts itself as a creative gesture, an opening to possible worlds.

In her paintings, images, atmospheres, and chromatic rhythms seem to emerge as fragments of narratives in formation, suggesting unstable landscapes, organisms in transformation, or phenomena yet to be named. Painting thus becomes a field of experimentation where perception, memory, dream, and imagination intertwine. It is in this intermediate space, between the visible and the intuited, that the artist constructs a poetic territory in which different layers of reality coexist, expanding the ways of seeing, feeling, and imagining the world.

As a third-generation Japanese-Brazilian (sansei), her ancestry constitutes a fundamental starting point for her research, from which, at this stage, she investigates how Japanese culture found in the tradition of storytelling a narrative, poetic, and mystical way of giving meaning to often inexplicable phenomena. Preserving folkloric traits and the representation of universes is a way of valuing a kind of unique essence of Japaneseness, of emphasizing a place free from Western modernity, and it is from this place that Mika draws her strength.

In Ritual (2026), the kitsune no yomeiri appears in a nebulous way. The viewer contemplates the scene as if in a forbidden manner, similar to the boy in the film Dreams (1990), by the Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. He, full of curiosity, sees a mysterious mist appear and hides behind a tree. From this mist emerges a procession of wary foxes. They walk slowly, always looking to see if they can spot any unsuspecting curious onlooker. After being caught, he needs to earn the foxes' forgiveness, but it's all just a dream. Kurosawa shows that he is also capable of adopting a surrealist perspective to compose his work, gifting the viewer with narratives that came directly from his unconscious. Similarly, Mika projects an expanded layer of communication: in it, the fable emerges as a creative and narrative force, operating at different levels of elaboration and perception of a reality that reveals itself, simultaneously, as abstract and sensitive.

Mika refers to kakemono (物), an ornamental element of Japanese tradition. Historically associated with reception and hospitality, these elements are used in domestic and ceremonial settings as a way of welcoming visitors. In the Eastern imagination, kakemono can also depict yōkai, scenes from kabuki theater, or illustrations of ancient narratives and tales. This type of scroll – usually a vertical painting or calligraphy on silk paper or fabric – is fixed to a flexible support that allows it to be rolled up for storage.

By engaging with this tradition, Mika reinterprets it, operating from a contemporary and regional perspective, establishing her identity by exploring the ambiguity between past and present. It is in this displacement that her work reveals one of the most sensitive tributes to the ancestral dimension of narrative, between cultural heritage and reinvention. Tradition thus emerges as a fixed repertoire and a living field of displacements and translations, in which references transform as they traverse different times, territories, and generations. It is in this movement that her work brings forth layers of memory that persist, albeit subtly and abstractly. Whether in the atmosphere of dreams or in the use of foreign words as a creative tool, capable of creating tension between belonging and distance, her practice constructs a space where the imaginary operates in an almost fable-like way. Perhaps it is the foxes, after all, that make it rain while the sun remains lit, articulating a zone of indeterminacy in which nature and fabulation cease to be opposed.

Exhibition | Mika Takahashi: Solar Rain
From June 11th to August 8th
Monday to Friday, from 10 am to 19 pm, and Saturdays, from 10 am to 15 pm.