Yohei Fusegi’s artistic practice is inseparable from the rhythms of everyday life. Each day, he stitches little by little, allowing repeated actions to gradually expand a growing mass of thread. At times he touches the work with hands still bearing traces of a meal; at others, the scents of daily life become absorbed into the work itself. Thread and fabric are not merely materials, but entities that change as they receive the artist’s body and the passage of time.
The resulting forms seem to embody time itself, as daily actions, memories, and sensations gradually accumulate. The repeated acts of passing the needle, tying the thread, and stitching again are perhaps less about completing an object than about continually sustaining a relationship with the material. Indeed, rather than regarding a large accumulation of thread as finished, Fusegi sometimes dismantles it and transforms it into new works.
His practice also unfolds in a variety of places, from the home to the natural world outdoors. The presence of those with whom he lives, music drifting through a room, the sound of flowing water, grasses in an open field, and his encounters with thread, needles, and fabric all become part of an ongoing exchange. Even without understanding the words, “this song fills my heart,” as if in a conversation carried by song. For Fusegi, these quiet accumulations of everyday exchanges constitute the very act of making.