Created during the years I worked under the pseudonym Bibi Yamamoto, these two bronze figures represent my mother and myself. They are not portraits but emotional presences, distilled into essential forms. Looking back, they belong to a period when I was navigating questions of identity, deeply immersed in Japanese culture and imagining myself through another name, another history, another possibility. Today they remain among the most intimate works I have ever made. They preserve not only the bond between mother and daughter, but also the moment I understood that craftsmanship can become an act of love: a way of giving permanence to relationships, memories, and the versions of ourselves that continue to shape who we become.

The sculptures began as small clay models during an artist residency at Fonderia Artistica Battaglia in Milan, where I worked alongside artisans specializing in the centuries-old lost-wax casting process. It was my first encounter with bronze, and one of the most transformative experiences of my artistic life. Watching fragile clay become enduring metal felt almost miraculous, revealing how emotion and memory could be translated into one of humanity's oldest sculptural traditions.

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to begin with the classics. Bronze and oil on linen represented, to me, the foundations of artistic practice—the materials through which generations of artists sought permanence. Long before working with photography, video, or artificial intelligence, I dreamed of understanding those traditions through my own hands. This residency allowed me to do exactly that. More than learning a technique, it confirmed something fundamental: that making is a dialogue between material, time, and care. These two sculptures remain as witnesses to that beginning, preserving not only a relationship with my mother, but also the birth of my own relationship with craft.