Miyamoto says that recently, she has become able to allow the "hands of others" to intervene in her creative process. 

It is not unrelated to the fact that she has lived and cared for her grandmother in recent years until her passing. The nursing staff visiting her grandmother is an indispensable "other" for the family, and even though in a way "society" has "invaded" the family, their presence has added a modest but certain fullness to her grandmother's daily life.

The existence of others, who are neither relatives nor friends, becomes one of the attributes of the family, loosening the contours of fixed everyday life. This experience also brought about change in the formation of the work. Through collaboration with installers, incorporating items brought in by others —both elements she had previously kept at a distance— into her works, and having someone (or something) connect with the hands she herself has shaken free, she seems to be trying to unsettle the boundaries between herself and others.

It seems to have had an unexpected impact on her ongoing theme of "family" and "home" and how she thinks about them. Miyamoto herself operates a small residence facility in her home town of Kumamoto o, inviting artists to live there for a certain period of time; this, too, must be a factor that contributes to the dissolving of the "family" form.

Not a family but a kind of family.

Not a home, yet something like a home. “HOME LIKE.”

I feel that she strongly expresses her trust in others and in the imagination and creation that emerges from others.

 

Hiroko YAMASHITA (Curator, Sakamoto Zenzo Museum of Art)