The encounter between Clara Imbert and Suzuki Morihisa lies at the heart of 19M Tokyo’s mission: to bring together craft, gesture, and material through dialogue.

 

Japanese artisan Suzuki Morihisa carries forward the nambu tekki tradition, an ancestral iron-casting technique handed down through generations. Clara Imbert, by contrast, approaches metal as a living matter, intuitive, expressive, shaped by the trace of the hand and the rhythm of the weld. Together, they have crafted a project where geographical distance becomes the very space of encounter: the metal itself as an invisible thread linking their two worlds.

 

The pieces emerge from this silent correspondence. Forged in a spirit of experimentation and mutual respect, these works embody the tension between tradition and invention. Imbert chooses to reveal the welds, embracing their imperfections as a celebration of gesture, process, and time, a testament to the visible trace of making. In these marks, a symbolic transmission unfolds: Suzuki’s heritage converses with Imbert’s contemporary language.

Motifs from Suzuki’s traditional practice find new life within Imbert’s sculptural vocabulary, not as quotations but as living reinterpretations. 

 

Through this collaboration, metal becomes a shared language, connecting two sensibilities, two histories, two gestures, to create pieces bearing within them both the memory of craft and the promise of renewal.