Umbra Mentis

Yakueda

Yakueda: in the Ikenobō tradition, the branches that hold a role.

Ikebana is a grammar of hierarchies. Three lines, never at the same height. I followed the rule: the vase at the centre, and the woman where the arrangement wanted her — to the side, low, at the height of the spheres. Not to say something. Because the image is more beautiful that way.

Whoever looks obeys along with me.


Woman in patterned dress seated at the far left of a tatami room, beside a large spherical vase holding tall branches, shoji screen behind.

She is the last thing the eye reaches. That is not an accident of framing.

Woman seated low behind a cracked spherical vase with branches, broken ceramic fragments scattered across the floor.

Same height as the shards. The arrangement does not distinguish between them.

Woman in a dark dress with a yellow hair ornament seated beside a large stone-coloured sphere and dried branches.

The branches rise. She does not.

Woman standing behind a spherical vase wrapped in fabric, dried flowers rising above her head.

Standing, and still beneath the highest line.

Woman in a long dark dress standing to the right of a cracked sphere holding red and yellow branches, wooden frame behind.

Upright now, and to the side. The centre was never hers.

Woman seated on the floor at the left, leaning toward a large dark spherical vase, stones scattered around her.

Leaning in, the way a supporting line leans toward the one it serves.

Woman seated on a low stool beside a vase on a dark plinth, dried branches above, debris on the floor.

A seat, finally. Lower than the plinth.

Woman with white-painted face seated on a box beside a spherical vase and tall bare branches.

Her face is already a surface. That was arranged long before I arrived.

Woman seated upright at the right, red marks beneath her eyes, a small perforated vase and yellow fruit to her left.

Here the vase is small, and she is looking back.

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