Aki Lumi was born in Tokyo; he currently lives in Paris.
Through media such as photography, drawing and drafting, his work inquires into the meaning of man-made things and asks what sort of cognitive processes determine our world.
Lumi’s series “The Garden” (which includes 100 works) represents his ideal garden. To make this work, he collected images of forests and jungles from all around the world, “cultivated” them on top of an imaginary building with real plants, and finally made analog photo-collages out of various iconic images and composite images made with a computer.
While his work “trace” may appear at first glance to be a map, it is actually a drawing with numerous lines, made only with a compass and a ruler; it can be viewed from any direction.
Lumi is also known for his work “traceryscape”, in which he attached insects to photographic negatives of landscape scenes, then drew with a compass and a ruler on the resulting print. This work brings out a new type of two-dimensional landscape.
In 1993, Lumi established a studio in Paris; since then, his work has been exhibited in France, Japan, China and other countries around the world.
