sumie garcía hirata

© Sumie Garcia Hirata Portrait ammann gallery

awards

forum ridm prize for maps of post-truth, montreal international documentary festival, canada, 2023
fonca young creators scholarship, national fund for culture and the arts, mexico, 2017-2018
best documentary short film for relato familiar, morelia international film festival, mexico, 2017
fonca young creators scholarship, national fund for culture and the arts, mexico, 2015-2016

sumie garcía hirata is represented in europe and the usa by ammann//gallery (cologne, germany) and in latin america by angulo0 (mexico city, mexico).

biography

sumie garcía hirata (mexico city, 1986) is a mexican artist of japanese descent who, in her practice, transitions between still and moving images, exploring landscape as a space where memory inhabits. based on this idea, garcía creates works that convey the contradiction seen in landscapes: on the one hand, they are fragile due to their flaws, folds, and fractures, but on the other hand, they possess an overwhelming force that defines them.

graduating summa cum laude from savannah college of art and design with a degree in fine arts specialising in film directing (bfa, 2011), garcía’s work as a visual artist has been recognised in exhibitions across the world like the zuecca project space spazio ridotto for the venice architecture biennale (2018). she has received the fonca young creators scholarship on two occasions, in 2015-2016 and 2017-2018, and is currently part of the national system of art creators (snca).

garcía’s documentary relato familiar has been recognised as “best documentary short film” at the morelia international film festival and nominated for ariel 2018 by the mexican academy of cinematographic arts and sciences. in 2023, she presented her latest documentary, yūrei, which addresses the veiled history of japanese mexicans and the enduring impact of historical silence on their descendants.

confín series

the confín series explores the tenuous yet drastic line in which the desert meets the sea. each seascape is confined by the presence of land, subverting the predominant role of a powerful sea and, in turn, giving way to a powerful, harsh landscape. the interventions in this series focus on and highlight the limits between the shore and the sea.

Lindero

year: 2023
material: giclée print on cotton paper mounted on alucobond intervened with metallized golden thread. framed in solid sapele wood with acrylic
measurements: w 76 x d 3 x h 113 cm
w 29.9 x d 1.2 x h 44.5 inches
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Confin

year: 2023
material: giclée print on cotton paper mounted on alucobond intervened with metallized golden thread. framed in solid sapele wood with acrylic.
measurements: w 113 x d 3 x h 168 cm
w 44.5 x d 1.2 x h 66.1 inches
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Isla Partida

year: 2022
material: giclée print on cotton paper (canson rag photographique. mounted on alucobond and intervened with metallized golden thread. framed in solid sapele wood, with acrylic.
measurements: w 168 x d 3 x h 113 cm
w 66.1 x d 1.2 x h 44.5 inches
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umbral series

the umbral series explores the fractures of the landscape through evocative shadows expressed via the sculptural properties hidden and hinted at in the photography. the materiality of the pieces questions the depiction of landscape through pure two-dimensional images, re-capturing the ephemeral qualities of seeing.

Broken Rock

year: 2023
material: giclée print on photographic rice paper intervened with folds, pins and golden leaf. placed on a black archival board mounted on alucobond. framed in solid sapele wood and acrylic.
measurements: w 50 x d 3 x h 70 cm
w 19.7 x d 1.2 x h 27.6 inches
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Threshold

year: 2023
material: giclée print on photographic rice paper intervened with folds, pins and golden leaf. placed on a black archival board mounted on alucobond. framed in solid sapele wood and acrylic.
measurements: w 70 x d 3 x h 50 cm
w 27.6 x d 1.2 x h 19.7 inches
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ishi series

the ishi series explores the process of sacralization through rites focusing on the shinto ritual in particular. the shinto ritual practice consists of circling objects with a string or ropes to mark them as sacred and delimit the earthly of the divine. by embroidering her photographs with golden threads, the artist creates a physical and symbolic aid to materialize the intangible in the coastal landscape.








Ishi Diptych – Claro/Obscuro

year: 2019
material: giclée print on cotton paper intervened with metallized gold thread embroidery. framed in solid sapele wood with no glass, mounted on sintra.
measurements: w 63 x d 3 x h 93 cm each
w 24.8 x d 1.2 x h 36.6 inches each
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goliat series

in the goliat series, garcía confronts us with urban giants that appear to us as decontextualized entities, subject to the action of other forces. with all its tension, the thread, as in david’s slingshot, controls and dominates the building. despite the fact that in our memory, we identify them as a giant, now they seem fragile and defeated. perhaps it is their loneliness in the image that shows their vulnerability and distances them from any temporal or geographical reference. the silence, the blue sky and the golden threads defeated the urban goliath.

Goliat Torre Latino

year: 2020
material: giclée print on translucent photographic paper. wood frame and print intervened with metallized silver thread.
measurements: w 24 x d 10 x h 31 cm
w 9.4 x d 3.9 x h 12.2 inches
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Goliat Reforma

year: 2020
material: giclée print on translucent photographic paper. wood frame and print intervened with metallized silver thread.
measurements: w 31 x d 10 x h 24 cm
w 12.2 x d 3.9 x h 9.4 inches
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el quiebre series

el quiebre explores the rocky seascape around a marine spout in northern mexico. despite the water shooting into the sky, the piece frames a sky-less landscape, trapping the desert and sea and highlighting the turbulent waves of rock and water. just under 100 km south of the border between mexico and the united states, el quiebre points towards a violent break, a fragmentation mirrored in the natural and constructed landscape. the piece, intervened with a brass plate, cuts through the landscape like „the wall“ does.



El Quiebre (The Rupture)

year: 2022
material: giclée print on cotton paper cut in two. mounted on alucobond and intervened with a raw, polished brass plate. framed in solid sapele wood, with UV70 glass.
measurements: w 110 x d 3 x h 80 cm
w 43.3 x d 1.2 x h 31.5 inches
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las conquistas

in las conquistas, sumie garcía questions the possibility and what the construction of a landscape implies. human intervention in space contributes to the creation of a „place“, thus introducing concepts such as scale, distance, coordinates and perspective that contribute to situating ourselves in that space. the game of perspective and scale in the diptych takes embroidery on the photographic surface as an additional element, highlighting the tensions between the image and the “real”. like a treasure map, the thread points out a path to the top of a landscape diorama that reminds us that here we are, and we are heading towards the delusion that we have conquered the summit.



Las Conquistas Diptych

year: 2021
material: giclée print on cotton paper intervened with metallized gold thread embroidery. framed in solid sapele wood and acrylic.
measurements: w 63 x d 3 x h 93 cm each
w 24.8 x d 1.2 x h 36.6 inches each
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crater series

the motivation behind the crater series arises from the artist’s interest in the idea of breaking an event that fractures reality or space as we know it. taken in the nevado de toluca, in mexico, the volcano becomes central to thinking about the ruptures of the earth that, with its force, breaks through time. with the resource of the embroidered thread in the photographic image, sumie garcía reinforces the accidents that occur in the field with their own powers and consequences.



Espejo

year: 2022
material: giclée print on cotton paper mounted on alucobond intervened with metallized golden thread. framed in solid sapele wood with acrylic.
measurements: w 86 x d 3 x h 153 cm
w 33.9 x d 1.2 x h 60.2 inches
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