EXHIBITION ESSAY/REFLECTIONS
By Madoka Muramatsu
Visible Mending - Reclaiming the Wounds
“I don’t quite know why, but I’ve been drawn to the image of the lightbulb.”
The artist explained, standing before the audience gathered to hear her speak.
Frances Melhop.
For many years, she stood at the forefront of the fashion industry as a photographer for some of the world’s most iconic magazines—Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire, and more—often shaping narrative-rich, ethereal editorials.
Now, she devotes herself to fine art—where her hands return, again and again, to the tactile, the intimate, and the handmade, seeking what was lost in the rise of the digital.
During the gallery talk, Frances spoke about how her years as a fashion photographer continue to shape her work as an artist.
“I’m endlessly fascinated by the human presence that reveals itself through imperfection. That’s where I find beauty. Back when I worked in fashion, if a model had a little gap between her teeth, I’d fall in love with that detail—and that’s when I’d press the shutter.”
The world seen through the camera’s viewfinder and the one traced by hand—her work was born in the layers where those two converged. She breathed and thrived in that in-between.
And now, through her art, it seems to me that she is reclaiming the depth, time, space, and texture that once vanished into the digital.
I had been asked to interpret for the audience at the reception that followed her talk. But just minutes before arriving, I knew almost nothing about Frances or her work. The request came so suddenly—while I was in motion—I barely had time to reply, let alone research.
So there I was, standing among a room full of visitors seeing her work for the first time in Japan, listening to the artist’s voice as one of them.
Her first solo exhibition in Japan held space for both mourning and hope—works that honored lives abruptly taken, and others that offered quiet assurance for lives still unfolding, and those yet to begin. Presented under the title Visible Mending, the exhibition featured pieces meticulously hand-stitched with time, care, and presence—each thread a visible trace of restoration.
“There’s something—though I can’t quite name it—that makes me feel there’s a link between women and lightbulbs,” Frances said.
“Take, for example, Atsuko Tanaka, the Japanese artist who once caught the world’s attention with a dress made entirely of lightbulbs. Or, Ewa Partum who made performances draped solely in electric cable and glowing light bulbs. Or, how, in the past, most of the people who worked in lightbulb factories were women... I can’t explain exactly how these things connect, but I feel it’s significant.”
Standing before a wall of delicately stitched lightbulbs, her voice warmed with intensity.
“I just feel this thread between women and lightbulbs, and I keep stitching them. Maybe it’s the shape, too. It’s round and bulbous—womb-like, in a way. If you flip it upside down, it even resembles a breast.”
“And the light it emits. The idea of a lightbulb being switched on… we use it as a symbol for inspiration, don’t we? I haven’t reached a definitive reason why, but I feel a connection between the image of the lightbulb and the feminine. These works carry that meaning with them.”
I had never once considered a connection between women and lightbulbs.
I'm not particularly well-versed in art, and I didn’t know anything about the lightbulb dress she mentioned. I’d never heard that it was mostly women who made lightbulbs in factories.
But when she spoke about the shape of the lightbulb—how it reminded her of the womb—something inside me stirred.
Faintly, but surely, a lightbulb switched on within me.
I stayed focused on my role as interpreter throughout the event—but later, as I exchanged personal words with the artist, that little light within me began to grow brighter.
Womb. Woman. Feminine. Disappearance. Body. Light...
The words we exchanged seemed to cross paths, uncannily, with the very themes and symbols that had smoldered inside me for years—stubbornly unresolved, now becoming, at last, ready to transform into a new form.
A flash of associations streaked through me.
In Japanese mythology, the sun goddess Amaterasu once hid herself in a cave, plunging the world into darkness.
In yogic tradition, Shakti—the feminine creative force—is seen as the energy that animates life.
“Our femininity,” someone once told me, “is like light. You can cover it, but you cannot extinguish it.”
They flooded back — vivid and radiant — like a reminder of the truth I had always known deep inside.
Light fell once more on memories of old wounds.
Wounds I had washed clean, over and over and over again.
And with the light came a half-forgotten ache.
Slow, steady, and deep in my chest.
The wounds feared being buried for good in the depths of my darkness, unseen and unspoken.
“I was here.”
With the light, the hidden wounds began to take shape.
“I am here.”
“I’m still here.”
“Don’t pretend I never was.”
*********************
A lightbulb holds light.
Not because of its shape,
but because of what it holds within.
That— is why it shines.
*********************
Forgive me
for pretending not to see you.
I’m not making you invisible.
I won’t.
I can’t.
Because you are a part of me.
You struggled hard to bring me here.
You are my tears.
Precious, warm, strong,
and mine.
We each carry a lightbulb.
A sacred vessel, capable of illuminating the dark.
When unlit, this clear glass form quietly hides into the dark around it.
But the current that can light it lives within us.
To cradle.
To alchemize.
To flow.
To shine.
The source of that light— is me.
Frances’ lightbulbs are tenderly stitched with a gaze full of compassion, speaking for our wounds, our imperfections, and the grace they carry.
As if mending a garment that mattered.
Through these embroidered bulbs, we may remember our own rough seams, or the tears in time that never quite closed —with old aches that return, uninvited.
And perhaps,
only then,
can we begin to complete the mending,
with our own tangible hands.
Not to hide the wounds.
But to cherish them.
As proof that we lived, raw and real
And to radiate
in the whole truth
of who we really are.
END
