“All moments past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist.”

• Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five.

"Maybe sometimes tomorrow comes before today.
Or maybe one minute is sometimes longer than a week.
Or can time have a smell?
I have always been fascinated by the sense of time, ever since I was a little girl."

• Miho Kajioka

In 2018, Miho Kajioka started the ‘so it goes' series, which aimed to visually share her perception of time and confuse people in a poetic and amusing way.
Her book ‘so it goes' won the Prix Nadar in 2019, and Kajioka, IBASHO and the(M) èditions have since published three more books in this series.
The exhibition at IBASHO features images from the existing four books, as well as images from future books. Through her intuitive photographs Kajioka is playing with the concept of time in different ways. In the exhibition she shows installations that question the chronology sequence of situations.

Kajioka skilfully creates poetic and suggestive unique works through alternative printing methods in the darkroom. Her images evoke a sense of mystery in her constant search for beauty. The focused and respectful way in which she approaches the medium of photography seems to fit in the tradition of Japanese photography that is characterised by the specifically Japanese sense of beauty: wabi sabi, or the beauty of imperfection.

Kajioka will be present during the Antwerp Art Weekend.

Miho Kajioka (b. 1973, Japan, lives in Paris) studied at the San Francisco Art Institute and began there as a painting major, but little by little turned to photography. She finished her fine arts degree in Montreal, Canada. However, she began her career as a journalist, producing TV news and documentary programs for foreign news outlets, and didn’t produce art for more than 10 years. It was after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that Kajioka was reconnected with her photographic art. Two months after the disaster, while reporting in the area, Kajioka found roses blooming next to a blasted building. That mixture of grace and ruin led her to create art that celebrates beauty in daily life. Kajioka’s work has been exhibited in Spain, Italy, France, the Netherlands, the USA, Germany, Belgium, Portugal and the United Kingdom.

On Friday 15 May at 4 pm at IBASHO Miho Kajioka will hold an artist talk about her series of books 'so it goes' in order to explain her artistic process. Afterwards, she will do a book signing of her book 'so it goes, so it goes, so it goes, so it goes'.

On Saturday 16 May at 4 pm at IBASHO Miho Kajioka will hold an artist talk about her artistic process and how living outside of Japan has changed her view on Japanese culture. Afterwards, she will do a book signing of her book 'so it goes, so it goes, so it goes, so it goes'.

IBASHO is a gallery and art dealership in Antwerp that specialises in Japanese and International Fine Art Photography, and that has opened in March 2015. On the ground floor of a nineteenth century townhouse you can feel at ease while looking at works from well-known Japanese photographers, from younger contemporary Japanese artists and from Western photographers who were inspired by Japan. Since photo books are important within Japanese photography, IBASHO also has an extensive book department containing contemporary and antiquarian Japanese photo books. Since 2019 we have started publishing books in collaboration with the (M) éditions.