The Physicality Within Vivid Lines

— First, please tell us about the first encounter between Egami-san and A-POC ABLE?

Yoshiyuki Miyamae (hereafter, Miyamae): I first met Egami-san in New York in May 2024. She came to an event A-POC ABLE held at its former flagship store in Tribeca during Frieze New York, the international contemporary art fair.

Etsu Egami (hereafter, Egami): What I remember clearly even now is the steam rising in one corner of the venue.

Miyamae: That was the workshop. We were introducing the process of Steam Stretch, one of A-POC ABLE’s techniques.

Egami: It was fascinating to see a flat piece of cloth contract tightly when steam was applied, gradually taking on a three-dimensional quality. I’m very interested in the process of making things, so I found myself completely absorbed in watching it.

Miyamae: After returning to Tokyo, we had an opportunity to view Egami-san’s work with A-POC ABLE’s engineering team.

Masahiro Okamoto (hereafter, Okamoto): I also had the opportunity to view the work together with Miyamae, and I remember being completely drawn into its world. They were portraits, yet they seemed to convey the atmosphere surrounding each person — their intensity and presence. There was also something fascinating about how the paintings changed expression each time you viewed them from a different angle or distance, moving closer or stepping back. I was also struck by how distinctly the colors were differentiated depending on the person being portrayed. There were so many things that made me curious, such as why a particular palette had been chosen for each person.

Miyamae: What drew me in was the physicality that emerges in the work. There is something that resonates with the way ISSEY MIYAKE approaches clothes making, but I felt that the artist’s physical movements while painting were somehow embodied in the paintings. There is a dynamic quality, as though she paints while moving her body, capturing everything in a single breath. At the same time, I felt that the paintings contained messages that could not be fully understood at a single glance. I was intuitively drawn to them, while at the same time becoming increasingly curious to know more. That eventually led to this collaboration.

— From there, how did the project begin to take shape?

Miyamae: We began by getting to know each other’s approaches to making things. First, we invited Egami-san to the ISSEY MIYAKE office, where we introduced A-POC ABLE’s techniques, such as Steam Stretch and Baked Stretch, through videos and actual fabric samples.

Egami: When I first visited, I was surprised to find that the space was completely different from what I would have imagined from the word “office.” It felt like a laboratory fully equipped for experimenting with materials, while also having the atmosphere of a workshop where craftspeople work. All of the techniques shown to me were fascinating as well. Materials swell and change their forms when heat is applied. As I watched this process, I naturally began to see parallels with my own work. This is because I also paint on canvas while thinking of my works in three dimensions. Seeing firsthand how a flat material like fabric can rise into a three-dimensional form broadened my sense of how my own work could develop into a three-dimensional expression through clothing.

Okamoto: You were taking notes as you looked around, weren’t you? I remember Egami-san suggesting things like, “Perhaps this technique could be used in this way.”

Expressing Vivid Portraits Through Jacquard-Woven Blousons

— In this project, three works from Egami-san’s portrait series—Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Paul Cézanne—have been reinterpreted as blousons. What led you to choose these three works?

Egami: After seeing A-POC ABLE’s techniques at the ISSEY MIYAKE office, the phrase “lifeline” came to mind. I imagined the portraits becoming garments, and, as the body passes through them, something like the soul of the work coming to life. At the same time, I wanted to create a product that would bring about a transformation for the person wearing it, too. Something that could accompany them in everyday life, while giving them strength on important occasions. I hoped the garments could become that kind of presence.

These three portraits seek to express the power of each individual and the energy of color. Cézanne, Renoir, and Picasso were not only masters of modern painting, but also revolutionaries and pioneers in their respective eras. I wanted to portray these figures because I felt that their energy was also reflected in their faces.

— In the three portraits, the figures are brought to life through brushstrokes. How do you yourself view expression through lines and portraits, Egami-san?

Egami: I have always painted portraits with communication as a central theme. Rather than simply reproducing my subjects as they are, I express their presence and aura through lines and color. At university, I studied classical painting techniques and anatomy, and was also exposed to classical paintings by artists such as Rembrandt. Through these experiences, I realized that I felt a sense of ease in drawing with lines, and this led to the style I have today. My current work may appear abstract. But underlying it is a foundation built from the techniques and knowledge I have acquired over the years. For example, even in these three portraits, I drew the lines with a sensation almost as if I were touching the bones.

I also studied calligraphy, so my lines have a sense of tome and hane—the stopping and flicking movements found in brushwork. Up close, you can see the powerful strokes and the material quality of the lines. On the other hand, when viewed from a distance, the figures and their expressions begin to emerge. Through these shifts in perception, I have continued to paint while asking myself what the essence of communication is, and what it means to perceive.

The parallel lines represent the “inability to communicate” in communication. I layer colors over these parallel lines to evoke the image of a beautiful rainbow as well. Through the richness of color and gradations, I have continued to question what linguistic diversity means. Behind this is my own experience of growing up in Japan, then studying at universities in China and Germany, where I communicated in multiple languages.

More recently, I have also become drawn to physicality, the vitality of the lines themselves, and the dynamism they possess, which has led me to incorporate curves into my work as well. How can I express through lines the pulse that exists before I begin to draw, and the rhythm of my breathing as I draw? I have continued my work while exploring these questions.

— Having looked at Egami-san’s three portraits, what kind of discussions did you have within A-POC ABLE’s engineering team?

Miyamae: The first thing we considered was which technique would best allow us to express Egami-san’s work. We ultimately chose jacquard weaving. When it comes to expressing the vividness of the colors, one might argue that printing would be more suitable. Jacquard weaving, however, is a technique in which patterns are woven through the structure of the yarns themselves, rather than adding a pattern to the surface of the fabric as with printing. This allows us to express the rough, slightly scratchy quality of Egami-san’s brushwork, as well as the flowing strokes created by gliding oil paint across the canvas. For these reasons, we decided that jacquard weaving was the right choice for this project.

Okamoto: In addition, this fabric is woven as a tubular structure, with the front and back layers connected to form a single enclosed piece. On the front, we used jacquard weaving to express the lines and colors from Egami-san’s work, while on the back, we placed heat-shrinkable yarns. As the yarns on the back contract, they pull on the front layer, creating a three-dimensional texture. Through this structure, we sought to reconstruct the strokes of the original paintings as clothing.

Following the Movements of the Body with Painted Strokes

— From here on, I’d like to look back at the process of this project by considering the expression of line and color separately. First, I’d like to ask about the expression of lines. Egami-san, there is a sense of physicality and force in the lines you draw. To what extent do you also leave room for chance when you paint?

Egami: I feel that my painting process involves a constant movement between chance and intention. I begin by making a preliminary drawing in pencil on paper, and at this stage I take my time considering the composition. Once the form begins to emerge, I move to the canvas. But once I start painting with the brush, I let myself draw freely, guided by the movement, momentum, and rhythm of my body at that moment. Although I begin with a composition that I have carefully thought through in advance, when I actually draw each line, movements emerge that even I could not have predicted. I think it is this movement back and forth between intention and chance that gives the lines their particular character.

— How did A-POC ABLE’s engineering team interpret the physicality and spontaneity embodied in Egami-san’s lines, and translate them onto the fabric?

Okamoto: We were able to read the character of Egami-san’s strokes by actually working with our hands. The jacquard weaving process involves creating a digital blueprint that determines how the pattern will be produced in the fabric. For this project, we created the data by tracing Egami-san’s lines on a digital screen. As we continued this process, we began to see that there was a consistent speed within the lines.

What gave me a clue was my own experience of studying calligraphy when I was in elementary school. If you hold the brush in one place for long enough, the ink begins to bleed, and it becomes difficult to draw a line of consistent thickness. But there was no hesitation in Egami-san’s lines. The speed of her strokes felt very natural and at ease. It was almost as though I were reliving the process of Egami-san’s painting. The dynamism that I had initially perceived as a visual impression when I first encountered her work gradually began to overlap with something I could physically feel myself.

— What aspect of developing the fabric involved the most trial and error?

Okamoto: It was figuring out how to control the way the three-dimensionality emerged.

Miyamae: Clothing is a product that follows the body of the wearer, revealing movement as it is worn. And there is a physicality inherent in the lines Egami-san draws on canvas. To reconstruct Egami-san’s work as clothing therefore meant creating a blueprint that would allow her brush strokes to flow most naturally and comfortably with the movement of the sleeves and body of the garment. We spent a great deal of time working on that blueprint.

Okamoto: To see how the movement of the garment would interact with the artwork, we printed out numerous images of Egami-san’s paintings and created models of the blouson in several different patterns. The sleeves in particular required meticulous planning. We explored how to arrange the lines from the original paintings so that they would connect most naturally with the movement of the sleeves. Once we had finished studying the models, we moved on to creating textile samples.

Once the textile samples were ready, we asked Egami-san to review them several times. In particular, we asked her to look at how the colors came through and how the lines were expressed.

When the textiles came back to us after her review, they had safety pins attached at various points. She had not left any specific comments, but those pins quietly communicated that the way the lines flowed and stopped in the fabric differed from the strokes as she herself experienced them. I think these were aspects that, although difficult to put into words, were important to the work. There was a period in which we engaged in this kind of non-verbal communication through the fabric.

Miyamae: These safety pins are a record of our dialogue with Egami-san. They make me want to keep them there forever, without taking them off.

Okamoto: Yes. We have kept all of the textile samples, and the safety pins Egami-san attached remain exactly as they were.

Egami: When I saw the flow of the lines that Okamoto-san had developed for the final textile, I thought, “This is exactly it.” He had understood something essential about the work that I had not yet put into words. I could sense that through the fabric.

Weaving Color with Seven Colors of Yarn

— Egami-san, I’d now like to ask about the expression of color. First, how do you choose colors when you paint your work?

Egami: I choose them intuitively. It is a feeling that is close to music. As I mix the paints, I create colors spontaneously, thinking things like, “It might be interesting to add these two colors together,” or “This feels right.” Because the colors emerge through a process of chance, I may never be able to create exactly the same color twice.

— How did A-POC ABLE’s engineering team go about expressing those colors?

Okamoto: In addition to the difficulty of expressing colors that emerge spontaneously, we also had to consider how to reproduce the bleeding of the brushwork and the gradations where colors overlap. In the jacquard weaving for this project, we used seven different colored yarns for the weft to express the colors in the paintings. From these, we created a color palette by combining two colors each in pairs from the seven yarn colors. We call this process “color mixing.”

During this process, we experimented with differences in how colors appear depending on the material of the yarn, such as cotton and polyester. We also tried deliberately limiting the palette to six colors instead of seven, in an attempt to bring out the intensity of each individual color. We explored a number of different approaches. With six colors, however, although the colors became more intense, the overall impression differed from the nuances found in Egami-san’s work. In this way, we continued to search for nuances close to the original paintings, combining colored yarns as though we were mixing paints.

Miyamae: The weaving factory we commissioned for this project is a long-established textile mill that ISSEY MIYAKE has trusted for many years. We continued discussions with the craftspeople there, working through a process of trial and error together as we developed the color palette for the jacquard weaving.

Egami: I had been told by the people at the factory that there were limits to the colors that could be expressed through weaving, so there were moments when I felt uncertain about how the transparency, bleeding, and texture of the paint that are so important to me on canvas would change when translated into fabric.

I will never forget the moment they showed me the color and I thought, “This is it!” What I felt was a combination of surprise and joy. The work had been transformed from a canvas into a piece of cloth, and yet, from among the limited palette of just seven colored yarns, they had carefully captured and expressed the world of the original painting.

The colors expressed on the canvas were translated into combinations of yarns, numbers, and arrangements, and gradually visualized as a blueprint. I also found it fascinating that the people at the factory described this process as “turning sensation into data.” Colors born by coincidence were gradually taking on the certainty of data. I found that transformation incredibly fresh and inspiring.

Joy That Made My Hands Tremble

— After exploring the lines and colors through a process of trial and error, what did you feel at the moment when Egami-san’s work became “a piece of cloth”?

Okamoto: When the fabric was finished and I was about to share it with the team, I was surprised as my hands were trembling so much. I couldn’t tell whether it was nerves, a thrill of excitement, or simply joy, but I had a strong sense that we had created something extraordinary. The way the sleeves would move with the wearer’s arms, the brushwork expressed through jacquard weaving, the areas that looked as though paint had splashed onto the surface, and the three-dimensionality that emerged from the fabric. I was incredibly happy to see everything we had been exploring take shape as a product that exceeded my expectations. I wanted Egami-san to see it as soon as possible, so I contacted her right then and there.

Miyamae: I could feel Okamoto’s excitement, and that made me very happy as well. Of everyone involved, Okamoto was the one who went through the most trial and error on site this time. Of course, the finalized blouson is important, but I could also clearly sense what we had achieved through the process itself: connecting the sensibility embodied in the paintings to the yarn, the structure, and ultimately to the body of the person wearing it.

At A-POC ABLE, we value making things as a team, with members from different backgrounds and areas of expertise bringing their individual perspectives to the process. Just as Egami-san creates portraits through her distinctive use of line, when we collaborate with artists who pursue their own unique forms of expression, we have a sense of being taken somewhere we could never reach on our own. This project became another such special experience.

Egami: Because I explored the expression together with Okamoto-san throughout the process, it was also an experience that moved me deeply. Something that existed as a two-dimensional canvas became a garment—something that has movement and comes into being through someone wearing it. A painting contains something like a signpost toward what the artist is seeking. Along the way of thinking and exploring, those ideas take shape as a painting, but what I truly want to express is not only the painting itself, but also the message that lies beyond it. That is why simply copying the visual elements on the surface would not have been enough. The blouson we created this time also carries the message of the artist that was inherent in the original paintings.

Etsu Egami
Painter; Visiting Professor, Kyorin University School of Medicine. Drawing on her experiences abroad, Egami focuses on discrepancies in perception and explores the essence of communication through bold lines and rainbow-like colors. She was selected as one of Forbes Asia’s 30 Under 30, received the Art Karlsruhe Award, and has works in the collection of the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe. She has also exhibited at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and is internationally recognized as a leading artist of the third generation of postwar Japanese artists.