15/06/2026
Mitsuko Miwa
Excavation of a Future City, 1996-1997
Textile, paint; 400 × 650 cm
Excavation of a Future City pairs two textile pieces imprinted with headless torsos at near-architectural scale. Mitsuko Miwa conceived the work in Berlin, devising a sand-resistant monotype after an overwhelming encounter with the Pergamon Museum’s collection of antiquities. Cotton cloth spread across her studio floor was sprayed with dye after sand from a nearby construction site had been arranged on top using hands and feet; the fabric was then hoisted up to let the sand fall and expose the image, an act Miwa likens to the creation of the Nazca Lines. The torsos, deprived of their heads and limbs whether by nature or war yet rendered sublime rather than diminished, transcend the domain of idol worship. The title’s temporal inversion, excavating not a buried past but a future city, provokes a meditation on civilizational rise and ruin.
Mitsuko Miwa (born 1958 in Nagoya, Japan) is an artist whose practice spans textile, drawing, and large-scale installation. Through cross-cultural encounters between Japanese and European art histories, her work explores embodiment, destruction, and the archaeology of form.
Miwa lives and works in Nagoya.
