Mai Usami

Dim lit is a reflection on the deep, half-remembered primordial landscapes that linger in our minds — those hazy memories that never quite fade away.

Grown up in rural Japan, in a time before the internet and surrounded by fields and mountains, I knew little of the world beyond. Reality felt dim, unfamiliar, and sometimes a little bit unsettling. My only escape was the world inside my head, built from books and imagination — boundless and private.

As I grew older, reality expanded. Alongside it came the feeling that I didn’t quite belong — misaligned with the world, speaking into a void. Growing up, it seems, is learning to sit with that sense of isolation.

Still, in those quiet moments, the landscapes of my childhood come back to me: the outlines of the hills at dusk, the scent of wet rice fields, the stillness of an empty road. Even now, they offer a kind of comfort — a reminder of something untouched.

In traditional Japanese aesthetics, there’s beauty in the shadows, in the blur, in what’s not fully seen. It’s a pull towards the quiet, the subtle, the space between things.

Dim lit is a way of tracing those fragments — the memories that remain, flickering softly in the half-light.