Ikebana: search for the heart of flowers

From 13 to 21 October 2023 the Centre d’Art, Citadines, hosted a very special Ikebana exhibition by Valeria Raso Matsumoto. Valeria studied Ikebana for 10 years in Japan, where she graduated from the Sogetsu school of Tokyo with the stage name Suiren (Water Lily). Since 2001 she has been living and teaching Ikebana in Auroville. 

Ikebana is the ancient Japanese art of flower arrangement, intended to instill in the practitioner a deep connection with nature. By the 16th century it had become a Zen practice to purify the heart and mind. In this exhibition, the seemingly simple arrangements of flowers with other natural elements, like stone, leaves and wood (Valeria’s husband, Kenji, complemented some of her arrangements with his wooden creations), are actually the result of many years of rigorous study in a discipline which values asymmetry rather than formal order, and where emptiness is a key element in the design. 

One important aspect of Ikebana is its ephemerality – today’s flowers are gone tomorrow. And this teaches us to live in the moment and, like Blake’s “kissing the joy as it flies”, not become too attached to material creations but to embrace change, even decay, as valuable aspects of existence. Hence Japan’s celebration of ‘wabi-sabi’, or flawed beauty, which values the incomplete, the ‘imperfect’ and the accidental.  In this exhibition it was the dead dragonfly which happened to die beside Valeria’s favourite piece, a simple arrangement of blackened custard-apple seeds emerging out of a pot, and which was allowed to continue lying there, its wings casting a rainbow in the sun. 

A successful flower arrangement, as the introduction to the exhibition puts it, “brings about a state of serenity and peace to the viewer”, something which Valeria feels is particularly important to bring to our community at present, and one of the main motivations for her mounting this exhibition. 

The awed silence in which people contemplated these arrangements, and the effusions of deep gratitude in the visitors’ book suggest that she fully succeeded in doing this in an exhibition which, in its supreme yet disguised artistry, set a whole new standard for Auroville. It will be remembered for many years to come.