綾城慧

Akira Ayashiro

Throughout the world, there exist myths and folktales that curiously resemble one another, transcending both time and region. Some similarities can be attributed to the transmission of stories through human migration, yet there remain shared elements that cannot be explained by that alone. The artist believes that behind these commonalities lies a “universality of the human mind” that transcends race and culture. Oral traditions such as myths and folktales contain universal patterns embedded in the human psyche, and this work is an attempt to visualize such universality through the medium of photography.
Born and raised in Japan as a second-generation Korean, the artist has lived in an ambiguous position—neither fully Korean nor fully Japanese—and since childhood has carried a sense of rootlessness and disconnection. This fundamental feeling of not belonging has drawn her toward the deep strata of stories shared across humanity. Oral literature, passed down through generations, transmits the memories and traces of people from the past into the present and onward to the future. For the artist, engaging with these narratives is an act of linking herself to the universal framework of what it means to be human.