Name: Mend of Absence- Mafune Gonjo- September 27 to October 16/2025
Start: 2025-09-27T16:00:00+02:00
End: 2025-09-27T20:00:00+02:00
Location: Älvkarleövägen 6, 11543 Stockholm, Sweden

$Mend of Absence- Mafune Gonjo- September 27 to October 16\/2025$

Extension Art Space invites you to the exhibition of Artist Mafune Gonjo.
Vernissage: Saturday, 27 September, 16.00-20.00
During Stockholm Craft Week. We open from the 1st to the 5th of October from 12.00 to 17.00
The exhibition continues until October 16. Opens on Fridays and Saturdays from 14.00 to 17.00 or by appointment via [email protected]
Location: Extension Art Space, Älvkarleövägen 6 (Ropsten T-bana, exit Hjorthagen)
About the exhibition
Mafune Gonjo has been inspired to create her exhibition from what remains: fragments of glass, worn fabrics, and grains of sand. For her, these materials carry memory, and their cracks are not hidden but allowed to tell stories.
Since the loss of her grandmother in 2022, her work has turned into a meditation on grief, not as something to overcome but as something to live with and carry alongside us.
In this exhibition, her installation Forest of Souls invites stillness, a space where absence feels present. Ascent leans gently toward light, showing that even in mourning, fragile paths forward can emerge.
In her grandmother’s home, Gonjo discovered hand-stitched textiles made from garments worn by earlier generations. Each seam revealed an ethics of care; each repair was an act of devotion and persistence. Her new glass sculptures extend this practice, reassembling fragments into forms that shimmer with memory.
A drawing inspired by the sand in Soma, her hometown, which was scarred by the 2011 tsunami, traces both loss and survival, capturing how the ground endures after devastation.
Gonjo’s work whispers that what is broken, like memories, does not vanish. It endures to carry tenderness, resilience, and light.
Biography
Mafune Gonjo (b. 1984, Fukushima, Japan) is a Stockholm-based artist working primarily with glass and fragile materials that hold memory and transformation. She has a BFA from Tama Art University in Tokyo (2008) and an MFA in Ceramics and Glass from Konstfack, Stockholm (2010).
Her work has been exhibited widely in Japan, Sweden, and internationally, with recent solo exhibitions at Kulturhuset Möbeln, Tierp (2024), Ashiya Garo, Kyoto (2023), and Lights Gallery, Nagoya (2022). Gonjo is exhibited and presented in significant collections, including the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, the Toyama Glass Museum in Japan, and the Museum of American Glass in the USA.
Extension Art Space is supported by Stockholms Stad, and the exhibition is supported by Bengt Julins Stiftelse.
The exhibition is part of the Stockholm Craft Week official program