Mizu (Kitayamada-cho)

The title pairs a one-character noun, "mizu" (water), with a specific civic address, Kitayamada-cho — a structure characteristic of Matsumoto's practice, which takes a local news subject and condenses it to a generic referent plus a place name. As a lithograph on aluminum plate, the print uses a planographic surface, distinct from the relief technique of mokuhanga, that registers drawn or painted marks directly rather than carved lines. The composition would typically place the artist herself in the role of the reported individual, in keeping with her sustained method of inserting a self-portrait stand-in into restaged contemporary events. The format draws on the precedent of shinbun nishiki-e — the illustrated newspaper prints of the early Meiji period that translated reported incidents into freestanding compositions — and continues that journalistic logic in a contemporary lithographic medium.