A white horse is assembled from old window frames, corrugated sheets and scaffolding pipes. Australian plants and branches form its mane. In Shinya Kusano’s Tsumugi — Suture Steed, plants are not decoration placed beside a finished sculpture. They become a supple seam that gathers discarded materials into a body once more.
When the mane becomes a seam
According to the organiser’s official material, the horse’s body is made from salvaged window frames, corrugated sheets and scaffolding pipes. Against those hard, linear materials, Australian plants and branches form the mane. On their own, the metal and timber fragments would remain still, carrying traces of their previous use. Leaves and branching lines create a movement from head to neck and draw the separate pieces closer to the outline of one animal.
The plants do not conceal the salvaged material. They keep rust and scars visible beside the finer repetition of leaves. Nothing is returned to a factory-new state; materials with different histories are joined while retaining their own surfaces. The word “suture” in the title makes that relationship explicit.
Reading a broken floor beyond the pot
Botanical Ruins, part of the same project, imagines a future relic where plants begin to grow through gaps in rusted frames and broken floors. In the official production visual, planting is not contained by a neat bed. It enters the joints of the structure. This reverses the usual order of indoor planting, where the pot or shelf defines the place first: here, the gap determines where a plant can belong.
Kusano is introduced as an artist working across greening, landscape practice and trash art, with plants mediating his spatial work. That background keeps the ruin-like surface from becoming mere scenery. The plants are not a final addition. Their volume, the direction of branches and the height of each base reorganise how the frame itself is seen.
Look at the joins, not a finished image
The published picture is an official production visual, not a documentary photograph of the completed installation. On site, the useful question is therefore not whether reality matches the preview, but how the materials meet. Where does the planted mane rise, and where does it bend the line of the salvaged body? What scale of plant occupies a gap in the floor or frame, and which way do the leaves face? Following placement before counting species reveals the work’s seams.
Tsumugi — Suture Steed is shown on the first floor of URAWA PARCO through 13 October, while Botanical Ruins continues on the first and fourth floors through 25 October. A limited shop by local nursery Numanoue Farm runs through 12 October and includes Australian plants. Check the organiser’s current notice before visiting.
Simply placing plants beside waste would leave the contrast at old and new. These two works propose a shape for the space between them. Leaves do not erase damage, and the rusted frame does not push plants into the background. When both retain their outlines while making one place, a ruin becomes less an endpoint of the past than an opening where plants can enter the future.