Urushi Lacquer Artist Reflecting Memory and Refuge

Saki Moriyama

Photo by Takeru Koroda

Photo by Kana Shimizu

Saki Moriyama

Base: Kyoto, Japan

Kyoto-based urushi lacquer artist whose layered, polished surfaces hold memory and quiet refuge — a graduate of Kyoto City University of Arts (M.F.A. 2015), shown at Collect Art Fair London and Fine Art Asia Hong Kong.

Discover the Artist

About

Career

Born in New York in 1988, Saki Moriyama graduated from Kyoto City University of Arts with a specialization in Urushi Lacquering in 2012 and completed her Master’s Degree in the same field at the university’s Graduate School of Arts in 2015. She has continued to deepen her practice at the Kyoto Municipal Institute of Industrial Technology and Culture, completing the Advanced Urushi Course in 2025.

Her work centers on the slow accumulation and careful polishing of urushi lacquer — a process through which hidden patterns gradually surface across each layered plane. Onto these emergent forms, she overlays ideas of time, space, and memory, creating pieces that invite each viewer to recognize fragments of their own remembered images. Her recent series draws on classical East Asian motifs of idealized realms — kochū-ten, a paradise discovered within a small vessel, and tōgen-kyō, the hidden world of Peach Blossom Spring — to explore what it means for a space to hold quiet refuge from the everyday.

Moriyama received the Excellence Award at TERRADA ART AWARD 2015 (Miyake Mai Prize) and the Japan Urushi Art Association Scholarship Award in 2025. Her work has shown internationally, including Collect Art Fair at Somerset House in London and Fine Art Asia in Hong Kong, with public collections at Chishima Real Estate and DMG MORI.

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2025 Theoria of the Mirror, Gion Konishi, Kyoto
2023 Saki Moriyama Solo Exhibition, THE THOUSAND KYOTO, Kyoto
2021 Drift and Skin, kumagusuku SAS, Kyoto
2016 Overlooking Mountains, T-Art Gallery, Tokyo
2015 Keshiki wo Toraeru, gallery 301, Hyogo
2014 Near and Far — Spinning Paintings, gallery 301 due, Hyogo
2013 The View From Here, gallery 301, Hyogo
2012 Tamarime, gallery 301 due, Hyogo

Selected Group Exhibitions

2026 The Texture of Dreams, ROD GALLERY, Tokyo
2026 From Here to Eternity: The Current Practices of the TERRADA ART AWARD 2015 Laureates, WHAT CAFE, Tokyo
2025 Hyper Adaptation II, Daihonzan Myōkenji Temple, Kyoto
2025 Art Rhizome KYOTO 2025 “Gyaku-ryo Kyoto 2,” Karimoku Commons Kyoto, Kyoto
2025 BIWAKO Biennale 2025, Former Nishikawa Residence, Shiga
2025 BASE/VASE, ROD GALLERY, Tokyo
2024 Urushi VOICE Exhibition, Kyoto Pulse Plaza, Kyoto
2024 Wonder Artist of Stones, Gallery Nishikawa, Kyoto
2023 Kyoto Art for Tomorrow 2023: Selected Up-and-Coming Artists’ Exhibition, The Museum of Kyoto, Kyoto
2020 Morning and Night, in the Forest, Gallery @KCUA, Kyoto