Aya Toraiwa lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Born in Tokyo, Japan.
Aya’s creative practice focuses on dance and filmmaking.
Her interest lies in the investigation of how we make boundaries / punctuations / narratives in order to relate to the world in which we inhabit, and how we then relate to the narrative we have created. In creative process She draws her initial inspiration from physical encounters with my surrounding world. She is interested in capturing first hand, material experiences of various textures, movement, rhythms, colours, temperature and integrating it in her work. Natural elements and animals are often used as subject matter. In her practice she makes use of both analogue and digital media; 8mm/16mm film, Low-fi to HD videos. This can take the form either of installation or single screen.
In dance, she is fascinated with exploration on how bodies shift between being objects, material that takes up a space, and being a place where an event happens, and how a body becomes a medium of communication, while playfully dealing with the fragility of sense making.
Welcoming fragility, acknowledging every detail and careful listening lies at the core of practice.