AMÉLIE DAUTEUR – "KIMI"

2026
3/12
Painted ceramic on a wooden  base
Height: 22 cm

Kimi is a name of extraordinary multiplicity. Written as 君, it means "lord," "noble," or "ruler" — and yet this same character is also the most intimate second-person pronoun in Japanese, the word one uses to address someone deeply close: you. Sovereign and tender, all at once.

Written as 貴美, it splits into ki (貴), "precious" or "valuable," and mi (美), "beautiful" — yielding something like precious beauty, a beauty that is rare precisely because it is valued.

But kimi holds one more secret: it is the opening word of Kimi ga Yo, Japan's national anthem — one of the oldest and shortest anthems in the world, a poem from the 10th century that speaks of an eternal reign, of moss growing on stone until it becomes a great rock. Kimi there means both "you" and "the sovereign" — a single word that holds a nation's devotion.

With this totem, Amélie Dauteur sculpts the paradox at the heart of the name. KIMI is both the ruler and the beloved, both the distant and the near — a figure that commands and yet addresses you directly, eye to eye.