Installation view of Kaori Someya: The Light Within at Ippodo Gallery, NYC

Kaori Someya: The Light Within
Closing Saturday, October 17, 2026
35 N Moore Street, NYC

There’s still time to experience Kaori Someya: The Light Within, the Nihonga painter’s debut solo exhibition at Ippodo Gallery before it closes Saturday, October 17!

Someya’s paintings apply the thousand-year-old technique of urahaku, or the backing of transparent washi paper with gold and platinum leaf, instilling her paintings with an inner radiance. Someya uses the traditional medium of Nihonga as a way to explore the complex existence of women in contemporary Japanese society, depicting female figures in vibrantly patterned traditional kimono, their expressions caught between serenity and resignation. In doing so, Someya works to explore the tension women face between external societal pressures and the internal desire to preserve one’s beliefs and identity.

Someya’s themes of impermanence, memory, transformation, and the eternal shifting dance of light are expressed as changing seasons and unfixed shadows. Vibrantly patterned kimono tell hidden stories of the characters. Kimono patterns derived from her late mother’s handwork recur as depictions of “life backgrounds” — interior worlds made visible. Employing ijidōzuhō, the classical Japanese technique of rendering multiple moments within a single continuous scene, she imbues intense emotion—grief and renewal— into sweeping still images.

To learn more, click here.