MANAMI UETAKE PHOTO EXHIBITION “The end’s approach comes over my mind as clouds cover the light” 10-18 MAY, 2025
We are pleased to announce the photography exhibition “The end’s approach comes over my mind as clouds cover the light” by Manami Uetake as our May 2025 special exhibition.
Can we ever truly understand another person?
This question lies at the heart of Uetake’s practice as she explores the possibilities and impossibilities of understanding others through photography and video.
In 2017, she created the video installation Father’s Constellations, in which she connected the moles on her late father’s back to form constellations. This exploration has since evolved into her first artist book, where she weaves together fragments of time and memory—her father’s haiku, portraits taken while he was alive, and photographs from old family albums—crafting a deeply personal yet universal reflection on loss and remembrance.
Uetake developed this book under the mentorship of Yumi Goto of RPS and participated in the 2023 photobook-making workshop PHOTOBOOK AS OBJECT, where she refined and completed the work. In honor of her father’s age at the time of his passing, the edition is strictly limited to 65 copies.
This exhibition translates her book’s world into a spatial experience.
Further details about the exhibition and artist’s book will be posted on Facebook and Instagram. We look forward to welcoming you to the exhibition.
©︎Manami Uetake / The end’s approach comes over my mind as clouds cover the light
“The end’s approach comes over my mind as clouds cover the light”
After my father was diagnosed with an incurable illness some years ago, I took photographs of him regularly. I took his bent back, dusty, dimly lit room and portraits of him and me. One day, my father finally died, and the act of photographing him came to an abrupt end. As I looked at my father’s last photographs, I remembered an old album of pictures I had seen one day. It was a picture of him holding me, a newborn.
Since I became an adult, I have had little in common with my father. We couldn’t get on together. But our eyes in the photograph are very similar.
What kind of person was my father? Through sorting my father’s belongings, I found some haiku. It was his hobby for several years before his death. These haiku were about his life and feelings after he became disabled. I felt as if it preserves my father’s voice and words in them.
Even now that my father has passed away, perhaps I can still get to know him through the haiku and photographs he left behind.
Now, I have all the pieces from the beginning to the end of our time together. It’s time to get to know my father through the things he left behind.
Manami Uetake (Artist)
Manami Uetake’s Photography Exhibition “The end’s approach comes over my mind as clouds cover the light“
◎Exhibition Period: 10th May (Sat) – 18th May (Sun), 2025
Open daily from 13:00 to 19:00, free admission
◎Closing Session & Artist Talk:
18th May (Sun), 2025, from 15:00
*The exhibition will be open from 13:00.
◎Venue: Reminders Photography Stronghold Gallery
Address: 2-38-5 Higashimukojima, Sumida-ku, Tokyo
(6 minutes walk from Hikifune Station on the Tobu Skytree Line, 5 minutes walk from Keisei Hikifune Station)
*Other events, such as talk sessions, may be held during the exhibition period.
Further details will be announced as they are decided, so please check our social media for the latest information.
©︎Manami Uetake / The end’s approach comes over my mind as clouds cover the light
©︎Manami Uetake / The end’s approach comes over my mind as clouds cover the light
©︎Manami Uetake / The end’s approach comes over my mind as clouds cover the light
©︎Manami Uetake / The end’s approach comes over my mind as clouds cover the light
©︎Manami Uetake / The end’s approach comes over my mind as clouds cover the light
©︎Manami Uetake / The end’s approach comes over my mind as clouds cover the light
©︎Manami Uetake / The end’s approach comes over my mind as clouds cover the light
©︎Manami Uetake / The end’s approach comes over my mind as clouds cover the light
©︎Manami Uetake / The end’s approach comes over my mind as clouds cover the light
©︎Manami Uetake / The end’s approach comes over my mind as clouds cover the light
©︎Manami Uetake / The end’s approach comes over my mind as clouds cover the light
©︎Manami Uetake / The end’s approach comes over my mind as clouds cover the light
©︎Manami Uetake / The end’s approach comes over my mind as clouds cover the light
©︎Manami Uetake / The end’s approach comes over my mind as clouds cover the light
©︎Manami Uetake / The end’s approach comes over my mind as clouds cover the light
©︎Manami Uetake / The end’s approach comes over my mind as clouds cover the light
Manami Uetake | Profile
Manami Uetake is a multimedia artist who is currently based in Tokyo and expanding her activities in Japan and abroad. She received an MFA from Tokyo University of the Arts in 2018. During her graduate degree, she studied as an exchange student at Chelsea College of Arts, University of the Arts London. From 2021 to 2022, she participated in a residence program at Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Germany) as an overseas researcher of Pola Art Foundation. Her exhibitions include the group show “Ugomeki” (CSLAB, Tokyo, 2024), and solo exhibitions “ANNUAL BRAKE 2024 Manami Uetake: Landscapes in Others” (The 5th Floor, Tokyo, 2024), “Vorbei ist nicht vorüber” (Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, 2022) and “Imagining Something Unknown” (Decameron, Tokyo, 2022). She is scheduled to move to Germany in spring 2026 as a recipient of the Japanese Government Overseas Study Program for Artists provided by the Agency for Cultural Affairs.