Concept & Project Director
Sora no Tayori Art Project
KIRIKO Kobayashi
Where I live:
Toyama Prefecture ,Kamiichi Town
Born：1987年
About the Creator
Hawaiian Cultural Interpreter
Hula Dancer
Gallery Liaison at Galerie JIN and Chiyo’s Student, Department of Art and Liberal Arts, Kyoto University of the Arts
はじめまして/ Nice to meet you!
Hello, I’m Kiriko.
Thank you for visiting this website.
I have always been the kind of person who might suddenly put on a backpack and say, “I’m just going to go for a little while,” before setting off on a solo journey through Europe or Morocco.
I suppose you could say I have a rather carefree spirit.
Through many journeys, I have had the chance to meet people from different cultures and encounter ways of life very different from my own.
In 2011, I moved to South Korea with my Spanish artist husband, where we lived for 15 years.
For more than a decade, I have learned from Hawaiian teachers about the connection between nature and ourselves, and about the philosophy of “Disconnect to Connect.”
I also had the opportunity to take part in environmental conservation activities on Kahoʻolawe, an island of deep cultural and spiritual significance to Native Hawaiians. The experience had a profound impact on my life and changed the way I think about our relationship with nature, place, and ourselves.
In 2025, my husband began working as a Community Revitalization Supporter, which led us to move to Toyama Prefecture, a place where we had no previous connection. Today, I live there with my seven-year-old son and our cat.
I am currently studying at Kyoto University of the Arts, and through my studies and experiences, I have come to feel once again that art has the power to connect people.
I hope this project can become a small source of hope or a new goal for different people. I hope it might encourage you to pause, even for just a moment, to reflect on your connection with yourself and the place where you live, to look up at the sky, and to remember the feeling that we are connected through the sky.
Each person’s sky comes together to become one sky that we all share.
Each individual piece of sky becomes part of a single artwork within the exhibition space.
Through this project, I hope to create another shared space of sky together with people from around the world.
Thank you for being part of this journey.
Kiriko
Why the Sky?
"The Sora no Tayori project "began with my mother, a painter, and her journey of recovery after suffering a stroke.
In 2024, my mother suffered a stroke and became partially paralyzed on her right side.
From her hospital bed, she began drawing the sky she could see from her window every single day, using her impaired right hand and the backs of the paper sheets used to serve her meals.
She also made a promise to several of the patients sharing her hospital room:
“I will definitely leave this hospital, hold an exhibition, and I want you to come and see it.”
My mother was eventually discharged from the hospital. Over the following months, she continued to create her paintings and ultimately held her exhibition, “Resurrection.”
Some of the people she had met in the hospital had passed away by then. Others came to see her exhibition, just as she had promised.
I witnessed firsthand how art can move people, connect people with one another, and create hope.
Last year, after meeting the director of the Nishida Museum of Art in Kamiichi, I found the courage to take the first step and think, “Let’s try.” From there, this project gradually began to take shape.
Why the Sky?
The sky is an image that can be shared by everyone, beyond age, gender, nationality, culture, or experience.
In the understanding of mele and Oli(poetry/chant), Hawaiian cultural practitioner Kekuhi Kanahele describes kiʻi (images) as existing within a three-layered structure.
You might imagine it like an egg, with a yolk, a white, and a shell.
At the center is the world of personal experience, reflecting our individual inner selves, memories, and emotions:
kiʻi ʻiaka
the self, shadow, and reflection
Surrounding it is the world that reflects culture and community:
kiʻi honua
language, clothing, food, customs, knowledge, and other elements of the world we share
Beyond this is the world of natural imagery shared by humanity:
kiʻi ākea
the sky, sun, wind, clouds, and other elements of the natural world.
These three layers are not fixed or separate. They overlap and move into one another. Beyond them lies a further world of legends, stories, and dreams.
The sky exists across all three of these worlds of imagery.
Even when people look at the same sky from the same place, each person layers their own memories, emotions, and life experiences onto what they see.
There is no single correct way to see the sky.
It allows for infinite interpretations.
This project is an attempt to make visible, through art, the process by which an individual “sky” passes through culture and connects to a “Sky” shared by humanity.
Countless individual skies come together and gradually become one vast sky, reconnecting people with people, place with place, and one moment in time with another.
Story
1987〜2008
2011〜2025年
Born in Yokohama in 1987.
After obtaining a Home Helper Level 2 qualification and a cosmetology license, she went to Australia on a working holiday.
Later, after saving money through part-time jobs, she embarked on a three-month backpacking journey through Europe and Morocco.
In 2011, she moved to Daegu, South Korea, with her Spanish artist husband for his work.
In 2019, she gave birth to her first son.
In 2020, she became a successor in the traditional lineage of Kumu Hula Leilehua Yuen.
In 2023, she participated in an environmental conservation project on Kahoʻolawe, an island of deep cultural and spiritual significance to Native Hawaiians. The experience had a profound impact on her life and further shaped her understanding of the relationship between people, nature, and place.
In 2024, her mother suffered a stroke.
The experience of creating “Mother’s Resurrection”, an exhibition inspired by her mother’s recovery and her drawings of the sky during her hospitalization, became the starting point for Kiriko to begin developing an art project.
2025〜Present
n 2025, she moved to Toyama Prefecture after her husband was appointed as a Community Revitalization Supporter.
There, she met the director of the Nishida Museum of Art.
She enrolled in the Department of Art and Liberal Arts at Kyoto University of the Arts.
She began developing Sora no Tayori, working toward its first exhibition.
Present
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