Higugma (Breath. 息)
Project description
Higugma (Breath. 息) is a site-specific installation by Filipino-Canadian artist Lani Maestro (b. 1957) created for the inaugural Beppu Contemporary Art Festival: Mixed Bathing World Triennale in Oita, Japan. Known for her quiet and poetic practice, Maestro explores the body, memory and the senses through minimal gestures and carefully considered environments.
For Higugma (Breath. 息), Maestro immersed herself in a nagaya, a one-hundred-year-old traditional Japanese wooden house. The architecture and atmosphere of the house became central to the development of the work, functioning not simply as its setting but as an integral material and conceptual element.
The installation comprised twenty drawings created specifically for the site. Maestro used materials drawn directly from the house, working with traditional craftsmen to produce wooden frames and making the drawings on shoji paper, the material traditionally used for Japanese sliding doors.
The resulting installation became an extension of the house itself, resembling an additional architectural presence rather than an artwork simply placed within an exhibition space. The relationship between drawing, architecture and material creates an environment in which the boundaries between artwork and dwelling become deliberately indistinct.
The work’s title brings together the Filipino word “higugma”, meaning love, with the Japanese character 息, meaning breath. This relationship between intimacy, breath and place is central to the work, inviting an awareness of the rhythms of the body and the atmosphere of the surrounding space.
For Maestro, the house was not merely a container for the work but an essential component of its meaning. Removed from its architectural context, the installation would fundamentally change, emphasising the inseparability of place, material and memory within the work.
Bio
Lani Maestro (b. 1957) is a Filipino-Canadian artist who lives and works between France and Canada. Her interdisciplinary practice encompasses drawing, installation, sculpture, sound and text, exploring intimacy, memory, longing, loss, embodiment and the sensory experience of space. Her restrained use of materials and language creates contemplative environments that invite sustained attention and heightened awareness.
Maestro has exhibited internationally at institutions including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; and The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto. She represented the Philippines at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017 and participated in the Singapore Biennale in 2019.
More recent presentations include Offsite: Lani Maestro at the Vancouver Art Gallery (2022–2023), featuring the site-specific installation No Pain Like This Body, and Shrines at Silverlens, New York (2023). In 2024, Maestro participated in HOHOL (Hang Out Hang Out Lang) at grunt gallery, Vancouver, while her work STILL was presented at the Libby Leshgold Gallery and on the Emily Carr University Urban Screen.
Project details
Year: 2009
Artist: Lani Maestro
Work: Higugma (Breath. 息)
Commissioned by: Beppu Project NPO
Festival: Beppu Contemporary Art Festival: Mixed Bathing World Triennale
Producer: Junya Yamaide
Director: Serizawa Takashi
Assistant Director: Keith Whittle
Format: Site-specific installation
Location: Beppu, Oita, Japan
Country: Japan