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EIJI SUMI
Cocoon 

Cocoon I
2013 Dec - 2014 Jan 
Art on Farm Jim Thompson Farm by Jim Thompson Art Center

Art on Farm 2013 was held at Jim Thompson Farm, located in Pak Thong Chai District, Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand, and organized by the Jim Thompson Art Center. This annual project aims to create connections between art, everyday life, and nature. The theme for 2013 focused on understanding the cultural and material significance of Isan textiles.

Artists participating in the project were encouraged to work within the natural environment of the farm and to experiment with local or recycled materials under an eco-agricultural framework. The project provided a platform for artists to explore new artistic territories by creating environmentally conscious works, experimenting with unfamiliar materials, and expanding their existing artistic knowledge.

For this project, Eiji Sumi created Giant Cocoon, a site-specific installation using recycled silk floss. The silk fibers were first stretched and shaped through water and later refabricated to form a cocoon-like textile surface supported by a bamboo structure. Through the creation of Giant Cocoon, Sumi sought to reverse the usual perspective between humans and silkworms. The monumental scale of the installation invited viewers to feel as if they were smaller than the silkworm itself, prompting reflection on the often-invisible processes behind textile production and encouraging a deeper appreciation of materials that are usually taken for granted in everyday life.

Although the textile surface of the cocoon has since been removed, the bamboo structure remains part of the permanent collection of the Jim Thompson Art on Farm project.
Cocoon II 
Bamboo, metal, LED, DMX controller

Exhibited in Home Coming Islet, Essence Contemporary Art Museum, Chongqing, China

6 June – 31 August 2020
The conceptual framework developed through Giant Cocoon later evolved into Cocoon II, a participatory installation presented in 2020 at Essence Contemporary Art Museum in Chongqing, China, for the exhibition Home Coming Islet. While the 2013 installation focused on the material origin of silk and its relationship to rural ecology, Cocoon II expanded this inquiry toward a more introspective and metaphysical dimension. Constructed with bamboo, metal, LED lighting, and a DMX controller, the installation transformed the cocoon form into an immersive environment where light and space responded to the presence of viewers.

Developed during the first and second waves of the global COVID-19 pandemic, Cocoon II resonated with the collective experience of isolation and suspended time. The cocoon became a symbolic structure of incubation—suggesting a transitional state between uncertainty and renewal. In this context, the installation invited audiences to contemplate transformation not only in biological or material terms, but also within psychological and social dimensions. Cocoon II is a participatory installation by Eiji Sumi that evolved from an earlier version first presented at Jim Thompson Farm in Thailand in 2013.

The work was further developed in collaboration with curator Nikun for the exhibition Home Coming Islet at the Essence Contemporary Art Museum in Chongqing, China. Its realization took place during the uncertain period between the first and second waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when global mobility, social interaction, and everyday spatial experience were profoundly disrupted.

Constructed from bamboo, metal, LED lighting, and a DMX control system, the installation forms a cocoon-like spatial structure that invites viewers to enter an environment of light, enclosure, and reflection. The form takes inspiration from the incubation stage of silkworms, a biological moment in which transformation occurs quietly within a protective shell. In Sumi’s interpretation, the cocoon becomes a metaphor for a temporal threshold—an intermediate state between past and future, stability and change.

Developed during the first and second waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, the work resonates with the collective experience of isolation and suspended time. The cocoon operates as a contemplative architecture, suggesting a space for introspection rather than confinement. Through the viewer’s physical presence and the subtle modulation of light within the structure, the installation creates a meditative environment where processes of transformation—both personal and collective—can be imagined.

In this way, Cocoon II reflects Sumi’s ongoing interest in spatial mindfulness and metamorphosis, proposing that periods of uncertainty may also serve as generative intervals from which new forms of perception, resilience, and possibility can emerge.

Seen together, Giant Cocoon and Cocoon II form a continuous exploration of transformation, scale, and perception. From the agricultural landscape of northeastern Thailand to the museum space in Chongqing, Sumi’s cocoon structures propose a reflective space where natural processes, cultural memory, and human experience intersect.