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Matsuo Bashō

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Cowgirl Gallery is transformed into an artist’s book. The walls function as pages and a haiku by the Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō, is rewritten in Braille. This is a contribution to Malmö Artist’s Book Biennial 2026, with Japan as this year’s guest country. Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) was a central figure in Japanese poetry and is widely regarded as one of the greatest masters of haikai, the poetic tradition from which modern haiku emerged. He developed a form of writing in which silence and perception often carried more meaning than direct description. ​ The Braille is painted flat onto the walls, visible but inaccessible through touch. Language remains present while readability disappears. Like the cicadas in Bashō’s haiku sinking into the rocks through their cry, the Braille and its meaning dissolve into the walls as image. The installation draws on the thought of the Chinese philosopher Zhu- angzi (c. 369–286 BCE), whose writing position language as secondary to experience: a structure that dissolves once meaning is reached. In one of his passages, he writes: “Words exist because of meaning. Once you’ve gotten the meaning, you can forget the words.” These ideas later shaped Bashō’s attention to the unstable relation between perception and meaning. This publication is part of the artist’s book, structured around the limits of language, translation, and meaning.

 

 

Curator

Selma Modéer Wiking, Ren Azuma​

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Artists book published by Cowgirl Press May 2026 ​

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