Northern Lights

Northern Lights is a site-specific installation in which Imada drew on the visual vocabulary of mokuhanga to evoke the atmospheric phenomenon of the aurora borealis. Hand-printed [washi](/glossary/washi), produced through layered woodblock impressions using [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradation, was suspended within the exhibition space to filter light and create ambient color shifts. The piece exemplifies Imada's approach to expanding traditional Japanese printmaking into spatial form, treating the print not as a framed two-dimensional object but as a permeable membrane between viewer and architectural environment. Working from her London base, Imada has used such installations to introduce British audiences to the material qualities of [kozo](/glossary/kozo) paper and the tonal subtleties achievable through hand-pulled woodblock printing. Northern Lights connects to a broader interest in luminous natural phenomena that runs through her practice, including earlier works exploring water and reflection. The 2012 dating places this piece in a period when Imada was producing several large-scale installations across UK venues, building on the institutional relationships she had developed through teaching and demonstration over the prior two decades.