aaploit is pleased to present “Listening to the Garden / 庭を詠む,” a solo exhibition by Hanzawa Tomomi, from December 5 to December 21, 2025.
Through the act of making paper, Hanzawa Tomomi has explored the relationship between material and memory. Paper is not merely a material—it is a structure formed by the entanglement of fibers, an object that contains human stories. In this exhibition, Hanzawa begins with private memories of her grandmother’s haiku and garden, moving toward the universal question of identity. How do we recognize others? What maintains our sense of self? Through the material of paper, Hanzawa’s practice quietly shows that identity is not something fixed, but something that emerges while wavering within relationships with others.
“For many years, my grandmother composed haiku while gazing at the garden. Even when she could no longer go outside frequently, this did not change. She watched the flowers shift with each season and composed verses. Those days accumulated, one after another.”
The garden continues to change with time even after grandmother passed away. When standing in that garden, Hanzawa felt her grandmother’s presence. From the garden that grandmother had watched, she collects flowers from the four seasons and embeds them in paper. The paper embraces the garden’s memory, and just as grandmother looked at the garden and turned it into words, Hanzawa re-experiences that act of composing by turning the garden into paper.
The garden that grandmother watched, the verses grandmother composed, the things grandmother touched—do these traces shape her existence? Or does the presence that Hanzawa, as another person, perceives actually bring grandmother into being? While making paper, these questions emerge. Identity perhaps exists as something established while wavering within relationships with others.
Within this continuous wavering, grandmother’s presence dwells as a lingering trace—in the paper, in the garden. The absence of that person and the feeling of that person can exist simultaneously. Hanzawa shows that identity is not something fixed, but about accepting the wavering as it is.
For inquiries regarding the exhibition and works, please contact info@aaploit.com
Exhibition Details
Listening to the Garden / 庭を詠む
Artists: Hanzawa Tomomi
Dates: December 5 – December 21, 2025
Hours: Friday, Saturday, Sunday 13:00-18:00
*Private appointments available on weekdays
Venue: aaploit
TMK Building 2F, 1-21-17 Sekiguchi, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo
Web: https://en.aaploit.com/hanzawa_tomomi-listening-to-the-garden
Inquiries: info@aaploit.com
半澤 友美 / HANZAWA Tomomi
Born in Tochigi, Japan in 1988. Tomomi Hanzawa graduated from the Sculpture Department of Joshibi University of Art and Design in 2010. In 2018, she was awarded the Pola Art Foundation Grant for Overseas Study by Young Artists, conducting research and production in the USA, Mexico, and Canada. Currently based in Tokyo. Tomomi Hanzawa is a visual artist whose practice explores the latent layers of time and memory within the fibrous structure of paper. For her, paper is a medium where fibers intertwine, unravel, and reweave, quietly revealing unspoken traces and narratives. In 2023, she created “Seisei Ruru” in Japan, using fragmented notes left by her late grandmother to explore the fragmentation of memory. In 2024, during residencies in Senegal and Thailand, she embedded local plants into paper, reflecting each locale’s temporality and human imprints. Recently, she has been expanding her practice to explore how the subtle gaps and spaces between fibers can hold fragments of time and memory, allowing the inherent voids and fragments in material to become conduits for new narratives to emerge.
Solo Exhibitions
- 2024
- Self: multiple presents, Fuji Paper Art Museum, Shizuoka, Japan
- 2023
- Grab the bubbles, Komatsuan sohonke Ginza, Tokyo, Japan
- 2022
- Narrative Act, DiEGO Omotesando, Tokyo, Japan
- 2020
- Note, MARUEIDO JAPAN, Tokyo
- 2019
- The Histories of the Self, Atrium Gallery, Pola Museum of Art, Kanagawa, Japan
- 2017
- See, JINEN GALLERY, Tokyo, Japan
- 2016
- Grey integument, Galleria grafica bis, Tokyo, Japan
- 2015
- Overflowing and Dripping, GALLERY IRIYA, Tokyo, Japan
- 2013
- Black scenery, Gallery RUTAN, Tokyo, Japan
White Atmosphere, Gallery Promo-arte, Tokyo, Japan
Selected Group Exhibitions
- 2025
- International contemporary art festival “NAKANOJO BIENNALE 2025” Gunma, Japan
- 2024
- Intimité: A Cross-Continental Dialogue Between Japan and Senegal, space Un, Tokyo, Japan
Chiang-Mai × Nakanojo International exchange program 2024 “FROM THE GROUND” Dream space gallery, Chiang Mai, Thailand - 2023
- The Eyes of the Skin, MARUEIDO JAPAN, Tokyo, Japan
International contemporary art festival “NAKANOJO BIENNALE 2023” Gunma, Japan
Shin Japanese Painting: Revolutionary Nihonga, Pola Museum of Art, Kanagawa, Japan
Premonition of Beauty 2023, Takashimaya Art Gallery, Nihonbashi, Kyoto, Osaka, Nagoya, Yokohama, Shinjuku, Japan - 2022
- A Quest into the World “with” PAPER, Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto, Japan
- 2021
- Texture and Perception, Nihombashi Takashimaya 6F, X Art Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
- 2020
- Pola Museum Annex Exhibition 2020 -Authenticity and Aura-, Pola museum annex, Tokyo, Japan
- 2018
- Upcoming Artist Selection FAUSS, 3331 Arts Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan
- 2017
- KANAYA Artist in residence program NANSO KANAYA GEIJUTSU TOKKU, Chiba , Japan
- 2016
- FINE ART/ UNIVERSITY SELECTION 2016-2017, Tsukuba Museum of Art, Ibaraki, Japan
Award & Grants
- 2019
- JOSHIBI, Production/Research Encouragement Award, Japan
- 2018
- Pola Art Foundation, Grant for Overseas Study by Young Artists(USA), Japan
- 2016
- FINE ART / UNIVERSITY SELECTION 2016-2017, Excellent Work Award, Japan
Artist in Residencies
- 2025
- NAKANOJO BIENNALE 2025, Gunma, Japan
- 2024
- The space Un Residency Program, Dakar, Senegal
Nakanojo Biennale International exchange program 2024, Chiang Mai, Thailand - 2023
- NAKANOJO BIENNALE 2023, Gunma, Japan
- 2017
- NANSO KANAYA GEIJUTSU TOKKU, Chiba, Japan