Elisabet Yanagisawa Avén

about the author

Elisabet Yanagisawa Avén (born 1966) is an artist and PhD student at University of Gothenburg. She is currently finishing her dissertation in artistic research titled “Proximus sensibilis: The Abyss of the Surface.” The study investigates the philosophy of matter and affect through the perspective of East Asian aesthetics and Western philosophies. Focusing on the Japanese concepts of yūgen, wabi, sabi, and iki, her research emphasises aspects of intuition, artistic self-cultivation, and sensuous knowledge through an exploration of the concepts of folding, the inorganic, and ethico-aesthetics in the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, the notion of conatus and the principle of affect in Spinoza, and the idea of ontological beauty in Whitehead. Through her artistic practice, Yanagisawa explores multi-sensibility in participatory artworks such as her Dreaming of the Intimacy of Materia, and by reassessing the way of tea, olfactory art, and haptic matter. Her work has been exhibited in Japan and she has curated shows of Japanese artists in Sweden.