Asano Yuriko visits places to learn about their unique food cultures and usage of plants, traces her own experiences and interactions with the people she meets, and creates paintings that record the heritage of the local area. More than mere botanical illustrations, her works capture wisdom and knowledge that have long been passed down from generation to generation. They incorporate topics informed by an awareness of contemporary issues that become apparent when focusing on a variety of different subjects, such as perspectives on living creatures other than humans and the symbiosis between humans and nature that is being lost in modern society.
In this region, where people have been making pottery since the end of the Heian Period (around the latter half of the tenth century), trees have been used as fuel, and the ashes that have been left over have been used as the raw material for glaze. This has left mountainsides denuded of trees, which has sometimes caused flooding. However, like the layers of strata that have molded the landscape, the history of the complex struggle between humans and nature has shaped the area, with the felling of trees not always resulting in one-sided destruction, but actually helping to protect some things, such as indigenous species that need the sunlight.
At Aichi Triennale 2025, Asano focuses on the vegetation in the Seto area and the relationship between pottery making and plants. A variety of plants can be seen in the area depending on different geological characteristics, such as nutrients-poor gravel that is very permeable to water or, conversely, granitic layers that retain nutrients well. Asano has painted ceramics using as motifs plants encountered while walking around Seto, in some cases expressing her art in the form of large plates sprinkled with ash. In this way, it hints at the relationship between the making of pottery that has been assiduously pursued in Seto for so long and the natural environment that it has been surrounded by.