PROFILE

Taiki Ueki / 上木 大汽

Born in Hokkaido, artist, photographer, and inventor.
Grand Prize, 13th 500m Museum Award.
Member of the Japan Modern Photographers Association (JMPA)

I print photographs onto ice.

It is an attempt to entrust photography, a medium created to preserve, to something that cannot remain.

The ice melts while holding the image.
The scene distorts, its contours fade, and eventually it disappears as if it had never existed.

In 2025, I invented a method for printing on ice-based materials and was granted a patent.
Building on this technology, I work across photography, video, and installation.

Memory, too, never remains in the same form.
It changes with time, fades, and is eventually forgotten.

So I work with things as they disappear.

Not preservation, but loss.
Not the completed image, but time as it changes.

“The past is beautiful because we forget.”

I continue to regard the moment an image inscribed in ice disappears as part of the work itself.