azuma makoto freezes vibrant bouquets of flowers in new sculptural ice installation

Azuma Makoto unveils new frozen flower sculpture

Japanese floral artist Azuma Makoto is known for creating intricate works of art focusing on flowers. Over the course of his career, he has flown colorful bouquets into space, and submerged them in water, while he has also preserved flowers in ice sculptures, not once but twice. After his last frozen flower piece, unveiled in 2021, Makoto has now returned with another ice installation in Hokkaido, Japan, called ‘Frozen Flowers 2023’. This time, the botanical sculptor created one of his largest installations by weaving different types of vibrant flowers and covering them with water that quickly freezes into ice.

Frozen Flowers 2023 | all images courtesy of Azuma Makoto

the beauty of flowers shines through extreme conditions

Like Azuma Makoto’s previous frozen sculptures, his latest work aims to study the changing life of flowers and how they change in extreme conditions and scenarios. Here, different types of flowers are placed in Hokkaido’s snowy landscape, their colors continuing to shine through and contrast with the white surroundings. The Japanese floral artist has created a poetic and powerful project that invites the flowers into unknown realms and encourages the viewer to appreciate and contemplate life in nature.

‘My mission is to pick flowers and plants which are already beautiful enough to bloom in a natural field and bundle them to rearrange by myself to create new beauty.’ Makoto told designboom in an interview back in 2021. ‘The lives of flowers and my life are constantly adjoining each other, and that is why I can put my soul into my artwork by uniting myself with flowers under such an extreme state.’ The full interview can be found here.

the new botanical sculpture marks one of Makoto’s largest installations