Textile Photographs: An Analysis of Ishiuchi’s Silken Dreams as a Mnemonic Portal.

Abstract Book of the 3rd International Conference on Art Studies

Year: 2026

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Textile Photographs: An Analysis of Ishiuchi's Silken Dreams as a Mnemonic Portal.

Giulia Priori

ABSTRACT:

Japanese artist Ishiuchi’s (b.1947) photographs, carefully developed in the darkroom, have the intrinsic quality of textile objects. They are grainy, textured and each uniquely handcrafted by the artist to represent the complex layers of Japanese post-WWII society. In 2011 Ishiuchi started to photograph the interior of Tomioka Silk Factory, once the centre of Japanese silk production and now a UNESCO Heritage Site. For the work titled Silken Dreams(2012), Ishiuchi photographed the raw materials and the objects involved in the silk making process, as well as the garments that the predominantly female factory workers made for themselves with the silk that they produced. These artefacts and items of clothing were framed within the artist’s photographs almost as relics of these bygone times, this is further highlighted using light and texture within the images. This paper will argue that Ishiuchi’s photographs can be interpreted as functioning as a mnemonic portal between these tangible heritage objects and the histories of the women factory workers who engaged with them. Thus, considering the ways in which the materiality of these images, charged by the work of the artist, can act as an agent of memorialisation helping to bring these factory workers’ often overlooked role in Japanese society into the canon of memory. Through the scrutiny of the multiple levels of significations contained within the images, the visual analysis of selected photographs part of Silken Dreams will be situated within transnational feminist theory as the epistemic framework through which collating global art theories and heritage and memory theory.

Keywords: Contemporary Art; Heritage; Interdisciplinarity; Japan; Women.