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“In Japan, the ideas of ‘hare’ and ‘ke’, the extraordinary and the mundane, were deeply embedded. Life was lived in a rhythm of separating the special and the ordinary. The folding screen, which is not ‘always’ there, is manifest in the fleeting moment of the extraordinary. We are in a reality of irreplaceable sensations and experience. For me, a screen is something which exists both in the moment and in the infinite.”

A great contemporary artist must satisfy several criteria: Acknowledgment of tradition, cultural and artistic, yet transcending it; mastery of technique and creative use thereof; articulated philosophy; and the ‘x’ factor, the artist’s unique spiritual expression which inspires the inexpressible ‘wow’ that announces the presence of greatness.

Maio Motoko, contemporary screen artist, satisfies these criteria. Maio remains true to the traditional function of the folding screen in manipulating physical space. Her reinterpretation – double hinges, differentially sized folds and reverse sided decoration – enables a flexibility of form and transformation of physical space that both embraces and transcends the intention of the traditional screen.