Parallel Hands is an exploration of a meeting point. An extension of my project about tea rituals in Saga Prefecture last year. Now in a bigger, more chaotic place, where we often live alongside without truly giving each other the time to meet. I’d hope this invites strangers to slow down, pour tea for one another, and create together. People, parallel in their worlds, briefly joined by the act of handing a three cups, with three different teas. After the third cup, participants work collectively on large sheets of paper laid, responding in watercolor or tea-pigment to whatever it has brought up in them. The work made together is placed in the space alongside some existing pieces, turning the gallery into a shared document of the ritual. Parallel Hands is developed in collaboration with a tea practitioner, an ambient dj, and a candlemaker whose work forms the atmosphere of the event.
Susanna is a Dutch-Italian graphic designer and visual artist based in Tokyo. Her work is grounded in an anthropological and philosophical perspective shaped by her cultural background, by questions of womanhood, and by a deep fascination with how cultural history intersects with modern identity, like being fascinated by modern and historical rituals. She works across photography, film, and text, bringing a cinematic sensibility to each. Research is her starting point; emotion, poetry, and storytelling is the outcome.
