‘hiraeth’ was a trio exhibition at Filet Space in 2024 presenting works by Kentaro Okumara, Franklin Collins, and Kairi Tokoro. This exhibition marks the first public project by Khrais – Tershana. It brings together a group of artists whose practices resonate deeply with the sensibility that shapes our work—materially attentive, emotionally grounded, and formally bold.

Through painting, wooden, and kinetic sculpture, it explores our longing for connection — between each other, the material world, and the silent witnesses we call objects. In an age of digital exchange, intimacy has become thin, our attention stretched across screens and simulations.

We turn back to matter: to the weight of tools, the rhythm of hands, the trace of touch. Objects, shaped by time and contact, carry emotion, memory, and the residue of presence. Each interaction, note struck, and mark made reveals a fragment of time where the world becomes a duet between body and material.

Through these gestures, a deeper form of connection is formed that is tactile, grounded, and enduring.

​

Artist text interpreted by Nana Kiyoshige

​

We contemplate the be/longing within the material body. We yearn for connectivity with one another and a reconnection with the physical world-the often overlooked and under appreciated material realm. We long for moments of interaction that spark a catalyst of understanding between our conscious mind, the physical world, and the time that holds us here.

​

Over time, objects handled by humans return to nature, bearing silent witness to the history of humanity. The material has gone overlooked, and passed by, replaced instead with the blurring lights of visual fakery—a meagre imitation of life posing as the preferred alternative to living. Intimacy is stretched thin. Though vast, our capacity for human bonds is rendered limited as we stretch ourselves across these planes of networking and modes of connectivity. Contentment with existing digital exchange limits our innate desire for companionship, understanding, and acceptance.

​

But still, we must yearn for that stronger, sweeter, more profound form of connection. It is one that allows us to experience what others have lived, to see what they have seen, to feel what they have felt, and to hear what they have heard. This contact extends to all consciousness around us, encompassing every version of what we know as being —those who can love, hate, and those who came before us and will come after us. A living receipt of all our interactions

.

In pursuit of this connection, we found that rhythmic time spent with objects creates a hidden realm in the mind where emotions intertwine with the material. The moment a note chimes, the moment paint hits the canvas, the moment a chisel reveals the wood-each has its unique fragment of time. In that instant, the world becomes a duet between you and the material. Through human contact, a tethered and lasting relationship is fortified where emotions and universal truths resonate deeply. Where else will we find this current of intimacy, the underlay of binding that brings us closer to finding belonging.