Kintsugi: an art image for our times

We have had to postpone our February 5, 2022 event featuring a video talk by Makoto Fujimura. It will be rescheduled once we have a better sense of when this wave of COVID-19 might pass, but in the meantime we do encourage you to explore Makoto’s work and thought.

One of the areas he has thought about very deeply is “Kintsugi,” which is the Japanese art of mending broken pottery in a way that makes it all the more beautiful. For Mako, this art form is a kind of image or parable of God’s promise of new creation.

Kintsugi mirrors what well-cultivated soil does naturally within its dark realms. In the hard winters of nature and the hard winters of our lives, we anticipate what will come: the infusion of golden, heavenly reality into the broken, death-filled soils of our lives and culture. Kintsugi fold flows all around us in a cold, hardened winter soil.

- Makoto Fujimura, Art + Faith, p. 57

This brief video is recommended by Makoto Fujimura in his book, Art + Faith