Émilie Hirayama is interested in popular know-how and the heritage of common objects.
The question of waste particularly interests her. In 2020, she exhibited a monumental textile piece made from scraps from the luxury industry at the Biennale Emergences and initiated collaborations with various stakeholders in industrial territories to recycle the waste resulting from their production.
Émilie Hirayama is interested in popular know-how and the heritage of common objects.
The question of waste particularly interests her. In 2020, she exhibited a monumental textile piece made from scraps from the luxury industry at the Biennale Emergences and initiated collaborations with various stakeholders in industrial territories to recycle the waste resulting from their production.
Collecting ordinary artifacts, she questions the aesthetics of industrial objects. Envelopes, sponges, toilet paper roll wrappers—some of her collections were exhibited in the window of Studio 13/16 at the Centre Pompidou as part of the "Art Discount" event. For her, the design of simple plastic stirrers reveals the human element in the process of mass industry.
Her attachment to the window display motif led her to Kyoto to observe "recycle shops," second-hand stores often relegated to the outskirts of Japanese cities. Her journal documents how these stalls resonate with the city, its margins, and the lives of its inhabitants.
The series 'A sunset a day' demonstrates Émilie Hirayama's taste for series and the repetition of a gesture that is both random and controlled with trivial materials.
At the same time, she continues to collaborate with artisans, notably with a baker with whom she approaches bread as an aesthetic object, a popular object, an object of tradition.
