Praise of Ma:

The early 1980s witnessed the beginning of a transformation in fashion when a group of Japanese designers emerged on Parisian runways. Their work challenged Western conventions through fluid, movement-driven shapes and the use of black and neutral fabrics, often in raw or distressed textures. This ground-zero approach to design emerged from conceptual principles of aesthetics — foundational to Japan’s cultural identity and daily life.

In Praise of Ma: Emptiness and the Space Within explores four aesthetic principles—Ma (間), Hi (秘), So (素), and Ha (破)—as reflected in the work of Rei Kawakubo, Issey Miyake, and Yohji Yamamoto. Garments are presented within installations inspired by East Asian culture and Zen Buddhism, composed to create a unified work of art – a Gestalt that proposes indeterminacy, emptiness, and contemplation as alternative modalities to fashion curation.

Seen through the lens of Japanese aesthetics, garments and artwork invite a new mode of perception—one that centers on the relationship between object and environment rather than only garment and body. By exposing how form and space, opacity and the passage of time deliver a different dimension of beauty, these iconic designers irreversibly altered the trajectory of fashion design.

The exhibition may be understood as a Japanese koan—a paradoxical riddle used in Zen practice to provoke contemplation. Just as a koan transcends rational thought, approaching clothing in contexts outside the body paradoxically brings its audience closer to its essence and beauty.