HOJO Mayumi Suzuki

Born into a family with deep, generational roots in photography, Mayumi Suzuki creates work that reflects a profound connection to the medium. Her practice is guided by the core belief and knowledge that photography serves as a powerful tool for individual and societal expression and liberation. Following her deeply personal and poignant previous work, The Restoration Will, which explored her own family in the aftermath of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, her latest series continues to confront her own life with unwavering honesty.

While her new series, HOJO, shares a similarly intimate nature, its direction takes a different turn. Narrowing the distance between herself and the viewer, she uses the photographic medium to weave a personal narrative inspired by her own body and life experiences.

Suzuki began working on HOJO in 2020, just after making the decision to stop her fertility treatments. During this pivotal moment, she noticed irregular, left-over vegetables at the market—such as two-legged carrots and uniquely shaped radishes—and felt a deep resonance with their forms. Through this series, which incorporates photographs of these vegetables, self-portraits, sonograms, and other archival images, Suzuki crystallizes her experience into art. It is a journey into the complex, inherent possibilities of the female body, inviting viewers to vividly retrace her path.