The MAO Museum of Oriental Art, Turin - Italy houses one of the most important collections of asiatic art in Italy and Europe. The project Hanauri. The Japan of the Flower Sellers, is part of the renewal of the Japanese gallery, in collaboration with Linda Fregni Nagler. The artist collected, selected, reformulated and reactivated a type of Japanese tourist photograph known as Yokohama Shashin. The original photographs, collected by the artist over a period of twenty years and displayed at MAO for the first time, are paired with Fregni Nagler’s own works. Rephotographing the original albumen prints and then printing the resulting photographs in the dark room, she then coloured them by hand using a method similar to the one used at the time (1860–1910). The images thus take on new meanings, illustrating the history of a specific way of looking at exoticism and alterity.

The subject explored at MAO is that of flower sellers (hanauri), a highly appreciated type of street vendor (bōtefuri) active in Japan during the Edo and Meiji periods.
The plant and flower theme is also found in the refined kesa textiles from the MAO collection, dating back to the Edo period, and in the kimonos that also enrich the exhibition, one from Palazzo Madama and two from the Museo d'Arte Orientale, Venice, as well as three fine lacquer pieces and three kakemono by Yanagisawa Kien, Kawamura Bunpō and Tomioka Tessai (from the Edo and Meiji periods) on loan from a private collection.

The rehang of the Japanese gallery is part of the MAO exhibition programme which, through loans from Asian art collections – public and private, national and international – aims to stimulate reflection on and develop new narratives around the Museum's collection. Hanauri is also part of #MAOtempopresente, a project that uses contemporary art as a means of interpreting the collections through the inclusion of contemporary works and site-specific projects created within the residency programme instituted in 2022.

Published on the occasion of the 2025/26 exhibition at MAO, Turin.