A huge, spherical rock mass in the empty, air-less, volume-less sidereal space, the moon first comes across as a bright, white mark on a huge black canvas. Indeed, it is pure white on pure black. Without the latter, it gradually becomes ethereal, transparent, like a giant jellyfish floating in a distant sea; then, in broad daylight, it eventually disappears, as if washed away.
Like all celestial bodies, the moon is a reminder of the particularity of our perception, our position in space and time. It is also a spectacular mirror of our own capricious mood. So poetically present in our representation of the night, it is unceremoniously dismissed as a new day breaks.
All cultures have, in one way or another, celebrated the moon’s beauty, symbolic meanings and talismanic power. But our consciousness of the moon has grown too sophisticated, too self-conscious. Then, of course, space explorations have made it seem all too close and familiar. The forces of the prosaicisation of the moon – science, the political use of space missions, Hollywood — are marching on. Masako Inkyo’s calligraphy brings us back to simple, and profound, questions: is the moon body or light, presence or absence, reality or illusion?
Inkyo’s moon is very much her own. The unfailingly egocentric human eye is brought back to center stage but with it a new moon is discovered or, better, re-discovered yet again. The contrast between Inkyo’s writing and what it rests on is always maximized. The empty background is automatically imbued with meaning. What’s more, it is no longer surface, no longer background. Negative and positive spaces are confused. Is the writing a trace of a nervous eye scanning the sky and using the moon as a form of light-ink? The moon is now pitch black, and the black sky has turned bright. Colors are associated to moods only if one applies a simplistic symbolism to them. Look more carefully at the kinds of yellows, oranges, reds used by Inkyo. Mood is conveyed by hues, not color. At the same time, there is something deeply unfamiliar about them; their quality is far too acidic, dramatic. Inkyo has given up offering us pleasant tonalities. Even when vibrant, the colors strike a dissonant chord. Far from reassuring, the moon can be a painful sight.
Lastly, consider her most unusual piece. This is a beautiful stone, standing as a symbol of a foreign, utterly unfamiliar object. The piece, which was actually flown in from a mountain in Canada, stands as a reminder of the impossibility of actually knowing the moon, the immense gulf between the moon as seen on the one hand and the moon as a physical entity on the other. In her playful and poetic parody of an actual encounter with the moon’s surface, Inkyo has left her marks on it. These, it goes without saying, are not footsteps but the beautiful characters of her calligraphy.