On opening night, Sumiko did something unforgettably strange. She sat in a corner and dialed a rotary phone—disconnected years ago—speaking in a whisper to someone named “Yoshiko.” Later, we learned Yoshiko was her childhood friend, lost in the 1995 Hanshin earthquake. The dial tone, amplified through a cracked speaker, lasted three hours. Half the audience left. The other half wept.
Tokyo Art Observer , Issue 44 (Winter 1999 – Rediscovered Draft) Gallery Kiyooka Sumiko 1998
Sumiko abandoned her earlier, celebrated nihonga florals. Instead, she presented the “Folding Series” — large sheets of handmade kōzo paper, folded thousands of times into geometric origami cranes, then unfolded and mounted. The creases trapped 1998’s particulates: dust from a pachinko parlor, ash from a student’s burned résumé, even a single dried konbu strand from her mother’s obentō . On opening night, Sumiko did something unforgettably strange