JILL.DESIGN

A tiny documentary about exhibiting far from home.

Welcome to my photography exhibition in Tokyo, Japan.

[Script from the video follows.]

We are in Ginza at Hibiya Okurōji, a historical building right under an elevated railway with trains running overhead – heading to the group exhibition for TOKYO STREETS 10. When the shinkansen bullet trains pass, the building rumbles.

It’s a very liminal, in-between sort of space. It’s both indoor and outdoor, and embodies both stability and travel.

That’s my work there on the left as you enter, visible from the hall even when the gallery is closed.

This is my exhibition:
From Fuji to Üetli: Tokyo Edition

Last year I exhibited the original version of this in Zürich, Switzerland, and brought all these prints across the world in my suitcase.

Except for one.

The one at the center.

For the sign on the wall, I asked a Japanese photographer friend to help me with the translation. Last year in Switzerland, I made this same sign – translated into German.

I added some lo-fi hand-made punk details in black to signal its deviation from the original.

The description on the wall reads:

Mountains. Trains. Rivers. Watches. Zen and Ruhe.

Island nations in their own rights, Japan and Switzerland are 9600 kilometers apart but in so many ways close in sensibility and spirit.

Tokyo and Zürich were home to me in 2024 — I arrived for the first time in Switzerland as a new resident in summer, just as the lively Limmat River warmed up to swimmers. Flying directly from one city into the other, I was struck by how similar they felt, kindred spirits across the world.

As a gaijin and Ausländer — an outsider, in both — I observe with a curious eye. Always between mountains, always looking out of or into windows at deeper worlds just beyond my reach.

From Fuji to Üetli is a dreamscape that reimagines place and proportion — and the disorienting freedom of flowing through rivers and time. Brilliant moments swimming in ink and memory.

I also incorporated video for the first time in an exhibition. What’s playing is my very short film called Dream of You that I shot handheld on the same camera and time period as the other images.

Now, about that central image.

I created and printed it here in Japan especially for this exhibition.

It is an in-camera double-exposure composite of a photo I took in 2016 and the airport tag from my travel here a few weeks ago from ZRH (Zurich) > NRT (Narita).

It’s from the suitcase that carried all my art across the world.

I love this new image that unifies my past and present identities in this moment and in the Tokyo that I love.

I intentionally let the technical and manual aspects of the work show — like the wires on the wall. I’m interested in showing the work as something made and installed by a person.

Not hidden.

Not overly polished.

The materials are allowed to speak.

The original work’s evolution into a new Tokyo edition is both an arrival and a new departure.

It means it’s been carried and is a living work.

The exhibition travels with me through different places and different lives.

Thank you for visiting Tokyo today with me.