Onikai MtK Contemporary Art is pleased to present “Mother’s Covers,” a solo exhibition by Motoyuki Shitamichi.

Shitamichi, who lived in Tokyo until the Great East Japan Earthquake, relocated to his wife’s hometown in Aichi after their marriage. He became intrigued by the 'lids' his mother-in-law left often around the dining table. Over the course of three years, he secretly photographed them. This series, titled Hana no Futa (Mother’s Lid), humorously captures a 'new family landscape' shaped by the subtle distortions in human relationships. In contrast to his more well-known works like Torii and Tsunami Stone, where he documents the everyday life of historical monuments while traveling, this 'B-side' project offers a fixed-point observation of the quiet, unchanging creative acts in daily life. His photo book, Haha no Futa, is set to be published by Akaakasha at the end of October.

Motoyuki Shitamichi

Born in Okayama, Japan, in 1978, Shitamichi graduated from Musashino Art University in 2001 and later attended the Tokyo College of Photography until 2003. He made his debut with the series Shapes of War (2001–2005), a four-year project in which he researched and photographed the remains of military installations across Japan. Shitamichi is known for his travel- and fieldwork-based art, including Torii (2006–2012), a renowned series documenting torii gates from Japan's colonial period in East Asia, and Tsunami Stone (2015–), a movie series that capture rocks washed ashore by a tsunami over 250 years ago on the Sakishima Islands in Okinawa.
In 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, Shitamichi relocated with his family to Naoshima, Kagawa Prefecture, where he continues the Setouchi Archive—a project to document the island in collaboration with local residents. His artistic approach is to 're-present' stories that have been buried in everyday life or nearly forgotten, bringing to light seemingly trivial yet significant moments by using photography, events, interviews, and other methods. These become relevant to our lives today.
Shitamichi has received numerous accolades, including the 2012 Gwangju Biennale New Photographer Award, the 2015 Sagamihara Photography New Photographer Encouragement Award, and the 2019 Tokyo Contemporary Art Award. He also represented Japan at the 2019 Venice Biennale and has exhibited widely in both Japan and internationally. He is the author of several publications.