Oil and Acrylic on linen

910 x 727 mm

Part of “Price–less: tales from a Port”, Yokohama 2026

帰る

con las flores marchitas

The crested ibis (Nipponia nippon) was declared extinct in the wild in Japan in 1981. A remnant population survived in China until a slow and carefully managed reintroduction brought the species back to Japan decades later.

To return to a place that has changed beyond recognition, to a habitat that no longer quite fits, is not the same as never having left. Volver, to return or to come home, understands this, as the tango does. Returning to a place cannot return us to a time. It is a feeling I have come to recognise each time I return to places I once called home. The streets may be the same, but we arrive with a different gaze.

The Japanese word toki means both this ibis and “time.”

The ibis drives its beak into a supermarket tray of horse mackerel with the urgency of something that has waited too long. Beside it, an orange lily spills across the composition, baroque and exuberant, its petals already beginning to curl, recalling the tango’s returning protagonist, with a “wrinkled brow”