The River of Time 時の河 , 吉田亜世美 Yoshida Ayomi

From the opening scene of rain falling lightly onto a tranquil river, The River of
Time unfolds as a liquid, shimmering meditation on artistic creation, memory,
and lineage. We are submerged into an unstable world where water—falling,
rippling, dripping—becomes both medium and metaphor: a passage through
time, a space of immersion, and a force that dissolves fixed boundaries.

Punctuated by the steady sound of dripping water, the video oscillates
between three generations of women artists from the Yoshida family. Images
of artist-in-residence Ayomi Yoshida at work intermingle with archival
footage of her grandmother, Fujio Yoshida, painting at an easel, and her
mother, Chizuko Yoshida, surrounded by her artwork. Rather than presenting
these artists as discrete figures, the video allows their gestures, movements,
and materials to surface and recede like reflections on water, merging past
and present into a continuous flow.

As the tempo of the dripping water subtly accelerates, distinctions between
generations blur. Memory becomes fluid. Time folds inward. The creative
act is no longer singular or isolated, but cumulative—shaped by inheritance,
repetition, and transformation. In the final movement, Ayomi’s print of tree
limbs seems to emerge from this intermingling of images, as if carried forward
by the current formed by grandmother, mother, and daughter.

alm yet insistent, The River of Time invites viewers not simply to observe
artistic creation, but to enter it—immersed in a living river of time, memory,
and making.

The Spencer Museum of Art commissioned international artist-in-residence
Ayomi Yoshida to create a new work to resonate with the exhibitions Street
Nihonga and Brush, Block, and Blood