Japanese artist Mona Sugata creates extraordinary botanical sculptures that seem to breathe with life, crafted from simple materials including untreated cotton fabric, thread, glue, and pigment. These materials, which naturally hold traces of fragility, heat, and human breath, are transformed into otherworldly botanical forms that possess an almost supernatural quality, making her works feel genuinely alive in a surreal and captivating way.
Sugata's latest exhibition, "What Resonates Through Us – Echoes in Overtones," is currently on display at Galerie Ovo in Taipei from August 22nd through September 6th, 2025. This compelling show presents a series of installations that continue her ongoing exploration of living systems, unseen presences, and the delicate conditions that allow life to emerge and take shape.
"I imagine them as relics quietly resting in an ancient monastery, holding a sacred presence," Sugata reveals when describing her artistic pieces. The artist emphasizes that her approach is intentionally subtle and contemplative. "My installations do not try to speak too much," she explains during interviews. "They are quietly placed with space, light, air, and subtle presence so that the viewer may encounter their own sense of life and the quiet sensations within."
Rather than creating literal representations of plants, Sugata's works reflect her careful observation of the movements and structures of plants growing in her personal garden. She pays particular attention to the forms of stems and the natural gestures of growth that seem to carry an inherent vitality. These detailed observations are then translated into symbolic organisms that gradually take on a bodily quality, sometimes resembling forms of intelligent life.
Among her notable works, "Tree of Life – A Planet of Playing Beings" showcases delicate forms that are deeply rooted in sacred cycles of nature. The Tokyo-born artist, who was born in 1983, works exclusively with untreated cotton, glue, and carefully diluted pigments, allowing the natural fabric to slowly absorb and bleed color in organic patterns. Once the pieces are completely dry, they are meticulously shaped and detailed using a heated iron tool to burn fine, vein-like lines into the surface.
"This is the moment when life begins to inhabit the work," Sugata tells art publications. She deliberately avoids coating or overworking the surface in order to preserve the natural softness of the materials and the organic shifts in tone. This careful approach results in a surface that feels more like something existing in a slow state of becoming rather than a completely finished object.
Two of her most recent works, "Pillar of Prayer Kumade" and "Pillar of Prayer Purple Star," are deeply rooted in the traditional Japanese jichinsai ceremony. This ancient ritual is performed before construction begins, where offerings are made to the local land deity to ensure harmony between human development and nature. Sugata imagines these sculptures as vertical structures that remain after such a ceremony, creating a symbolic link between the land and its inhabitants.
In these works, the ceramic base represents the land god, while the plant forms growing from it reflect a relationship of peaceful coexistence between what is built by humans and what already exists in nature. "It expresses the idea of sacred plants living on the god of the land and living in beautiful coexistence," Sugata notes, highlighting the spiritual dimension of her artistic practice.
"Tree of Life – A Planet of Playing Beings," which was installed at the atrium of the prestigious Spiral art center in Tokyo, reflects Sugata's philosophical idea of Earth as an active field shaped by invisible beings, including bacteria, insects, and countless other non-human forms of life. "Even after death, life becomes part of other beings, undergoing a perpetual cycle of rebirth and rebirth," she explains. The work evokes these eternal cycles through carefully layered organic forms that spiral outward in continuous motion, resembling a kind of visual system for life as play, disappearance, and return.
Sugata's artistic approach is fundamentally shaped by physical sensitivity rather than strict conceptual planning. She adjusts her creative process depending on the natural direction each piece wants to take, working primarily by intuitive feel rather than predetermined concept. "If I feel tension or resistance in my body, I take it as a sign that something is off," she explains, describing her deeply embodied creative process.
The final step in her process, using the heated iron to create form and detail, is done entirely by hand and involves direct contact with intense heat, often leading to minor burns on her hands and fingers. Rather than seeing these as accidents, she treats these physical traces as an integral part of the work itself, serving as permanent reminders of material resistance, precise timing, and the repetitive nature of her practice.
Mona Sugata was born in Tokyo in 1983 and studied printmaking at the renowned Tama Art University. While her background in printmaking still informs her sophisticated handling of surface and tone, her current installations have evolved far beyond printed images into something much more spatial, interactive, and responsive to their environment.
"My works are not for interpretation," she emphasizes. "They are for quiet encounters." Sugata hopes that viewers will encounter something deeply personal and transformative in her work, discovering their own connections to the natural world and cycles of life. "In such stillness," she reflects thoughtfully, "one might sense a deeper connection, with the world, with others. And in that resonance, I too receive something essential."
Her sculptures represent a unique fusion of traditional Japanese spiritual practices with contemporary artistic techniques, creating works that function as both aesthetic objects and meditation aids. Through her careful use of untreated cotton, glue, and diluted pigments, she creates what she describes as "a kind of visual system for life as play, disappearance, and return," reflecting her understanding of Earth as an active field shaped by invisible beings, bacteria, insects, and countless other non-human lives that surround us daily.
