Pillow Book as Inheritance

Inspired by the Japanese Shunga pillow book – an intimate manual of sex passed from mother to daughter – this series reimagined the tradition as a Westernized “pillow book” charged with social commentary. Paintings, glass, and crystal sculptures lured viewers with beauty and artifice, only to confront them with tangled questions of desire, pornography, female autonomy, and cultural squeamishness around nudity.

At its core, the work asked: What do we inherit about love, lust, sex, and intimacy – and who decides what is passed down? The closing performance, Claim Your Birthright, transformed the exhibit into a communal bequest: fragments of imagery were cut, stripped, or claimed by participants, mirroring the very act of passing on knowledge. In this way, the “notes of the pillow” became not private instructions, but shared provocations -an inheritance of agency, desire, and discernment.

Shunga Garden