KANA KAWANISHI PHOTOGRAPHY is pleased to present “Adding Canna Flowers to Tokyo,” a solo exhibition by Sayaka Toda starting  Saturday, July 6th, 2024.

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Sayaka Toda has been attracting attention as a painter who connotes an implicit world of beauty and disfigurement, which are inextricably linked. She is an artist who has been attracting attention for her expressive ability, which is universal regardless of medium, including solo exhibitions of only photographic expression and installations combining photography, painting, sculpture, plants, and other media. In 2024, she was selected for “TOKAS-Emerging 2024,” where her installations that transcend time and space have received high acclaim.

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This exhibition, “Adding Canna Flowers to Tokyo,” was inspired by Toda’s discovery of the deep history of the canna flower as a “symbol of peace,” which she had chosen as the subject for her first solo photography exhibition. On August 6, 1945, Hiroshima turned into a scorched wasteland in an instant by the world’s first atomic bomb, it was said that “no grass or trees would grow in Hiroshima for the next 75 years.” However, a single canna flower soon bloomed near the epicenter, giving people hope for life. Learning this fact during her residency, Toda has since begun subtly placing canna flowers around the city in a guerrilla manner and documenting them as photographic works.

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At first glance, the subject of “flowers” may seem unrelated to the social context, but how they thoroughly live their lives quietly suggests how they create their own stories, depending on their place and era. We cordially invite all to this exhibition by Sayaka Toda, the painter who uses diverse mediums to express her worldview.