Eriko Kaniwa is a Tokyo-based digital artist whose practice explores new visual possibilities of human and nature interconnection.

After a career in TV program production and social venture innovation, Kaniwa founded Sensegraphia in 2014 to advocate a philosophy and creative practice that reconstructs the essential unity of people and nature through fine art. She also developed a workshop program applying photography and digital imagery to aesthetics education, presented at graduate schools, international companies, and conferences worldwide.

Her earlier work focused on Japanese symbols of nature worship, photographing sacred sites such as torii gates in the sea, married rocks, and World Heritage landscapes. These works were published in the book JOKEI - Symbols of Nature Worship, Sacred Places in Japan, which went on to receive multiple international photography awards and recognition at global competitions.

Today, Kaniwa creates digital artworks that merge human and botanical forms, a theme she calls botanical estrangement. Through AI-generated imagery, digital collage, and specimen-like aesthetics, she visualizes liminal bodies where skin, organs, and plant structures intertwine. These works evoke both the fragility and resilience of life in the Anthropocene, inviting viewers to experience the human body as an ecological medium deeply entangled with the natural world. She continues this pursuit through both artistic exploration and academic research, creating works that reimagine and critically question the evolving relationship between humans and nature.

Beyond sight Aesthetic insight

Just as there are infinite gradations between the light and shadow that make up the essence of photography, are there not also infinite forms that exist between living and non-living (organic and inorganic). The more I photograph nature, the more I wonder, how can we, today, perceive these in-between forms.

Even today, many landscapes exist in Japan that symbolize nature worship.
Extending from north to south in a long, thin constellation of islands, the Japanese archipelago is blessed with four distinct seasons and an abundance of fresh water, mountains, and sea. Here, appreciating the beauty of nature is a cultural tradition. I am affectionately proud of the values that have flourished within this natural context: the wabi-sabi aesthetic of imperfection and impermanence; the pursuit of subtle grace; the awareness that humans are a part of nature and are deeply entwined with its dynamics, both consciously and unconsciously. I wonder if this philosophical culture, characterized by empathy with nature, evolved not first and foremost from the natural landscape itself, but rather from the contemplation and perspectives of those who viewed it. 

In the present age, boundaries between human and non-human, plant and animal, organic and artificial dissolve into gradients rather than remain strict lines. These in-between zones are places where categories overlap and sensibilities flow into one another. 

The continuous world of living and inanimate, three-dimensional and four-dimensional, visible and invisible, opens the possibility of transcendental analogies between the macro and the micro. It is within these gradients?between categories, between species, between perception and abstraction?that my work resides. And it is my task as an artist to make these invisible transitions perceptible, so that we may reimagine our place in the living fabric of the world.

What is Sensegraphia?

Sensegraphia is a conceptual redefinition of photography, in which the visual aesthetics of the photograph are used to develop and express the sense of nature that enables us to recognize that humans are a part of nature and that we are centrally involved, both consciously and subconsciously, in nature's dynamics. Through fine art, Sensegraphia puts forward a philosophy and creative activities that reestablish the essential unity between people and nature, even within the context of today's highly advanced science and technology.

About the Logo

The design inside the circle is an abstraction of the Japanese characters meaning 'see' and 'feel'. The circle represents both the Earth and the traditional latticed windows of Japan, expressing Sensegraphia's photographic philosophy of using the window of our senses and the metaphor of the Earth to see and feel landscapes as fine art.

Copyright (c) 2008-2025 by SENSEGRAPHIA- Eriko Kaniwa. All rights reserved.  
All Images on this site are fully copyrighted, may not be used without written permission.