We Will Leave

2026, We Will Leave

Materials: Fabric, canvas, hand stitching, paper, self-recycled wax adhesive, and old clothing.

After my grandmother passed away, my family was forced to leave the house that had held so many of our memories. A place that had once been familiar and belonged to our family suddenly became somewhere we could no longer remain.

I created a large tote bag as an attempt to preserve and carry as much as possible while moving. It gathers fragments of memories that we can take with us. Pieces of fabric, figures, objects, flowers, and familiar images are assembled like the things a family tries to hold onto before leaving. Each fragment carries its own story, but together they form the image of a home being taken apart.

The work has two sides and is made from discarded fabrics and old clothing stitched together by hand, combined with mixed-media paintings on fabric and paper. The details are attached using a self-recycled wax-based adhesive made from discarded materials. I wanted materials that might otherwise have been thrown away to be preserved and transformed into a vessel for holding memories.

The back of the work depicts one of my grandmother’s old dreams: to visit Mount Fuji and call us from there. And, of course, I saved her number when we moved house.

We Will Leave is not only about leaving a house. It is about the moment when a place gradually becomes a memory, and when we realize that sometimes the only thing we can carry with us is not the house itself, but what we remember of it.

And after all, we will leave.

We then carefully dismantle the bag and collect all its individual components, transforming them into an oracle deck offering words of advice. Through this transformation, the fragments of a home and the memories embedded within them take on a new form, continuing to exist and offering guidance to others.