Horikiri-White graduated with First Class Honours in Drawing and Printmaking from the University of the West of England in Summer 2023.
Horikiri-White's practice explores ideas of identity, memory, heritage, and (not) belonging. Her artwork reflects her dual nationality as a half-Japanese, half-English woman who grew up in England. She has a keen interest in traditional Japanese Ukiyo-E 浮世絵 printmaking and period British textile patterns, which are reflected in her practice through motifs, patterns, and colour palette, often juxtaposing muted greens and earth tones with prismatic crimson.
She examines Japanese culture through a Western lens and British culture from the perspective of an outsider. Her artwork explores the complex emotions of existing in an imagined space between two worlds, where she feels a sense of not fully belonging to either. The aim of her practice is to connect these two worlds in a way that is personally meaningful, appropriating traditional Japanese and British iconography by depicting them alongside collected memories and objects from her upbringing within two diversely different cultures.
Layers and combined processes are prominent in her work, reflecting the mismatch of cultures, emotions, and memories she has experienced throughout her life in England and Japan. By incorporating a range of media, including copperplate etching and aquatint, relief print, painting, drawing, and embroidery, she both reveals and conceals her feelings of displacement and belonging. Her depictions of cultural objects represent memories from her British and Japanese family, with sentimentality and a subtle sense of humour.
Horikiri-White completed a 6 month Educational Graduate Residency Programme with Chapel Arts Studios in her home town of Andover, Hampshire, in August 2024. Throughout the residency, Horikiri-White, alongside another fellow Graduate Artist, created a curriculum and taught primary school children art, focussing on themes of storytelling, self expression and identity. Sessions had an emphasis on introducing the children to artists from a range of cultures and minority groups, fostering inclusivity and celebrating diversity. In July 2024, Horikiri-White's artwork was presented in the joint 'Threads: The Stories That Tie Us Together' exhibition at Chapel Arts Studios, alongside the fellow Graduate Artist and children's art.