Seta Ichika - I Don-t Have A Mother Anymore- So... (2025)

Her next project, announced in late 2024, is a feature-length film tentatively titled “So I Learn Your Recipes.” It will have no dialogue — only the sounds of chopping, boiling, simmering, and the occasional sigh. The camera will focus on hands: Ichika’s hands, following the instructions in her mother’s handwriting, recreating dishes she will never taste with the person who taught them to her.

She paused.

Then, at 22, she began to write. Ichika’s oeuvre is small but devastating. She works in three mediums: prose, visual art (specifically kintsugi photography), and experimental audio diaries. Each piece circles back to the same void. 1. “I Don’t Have a Mother Anymore, So I Keep the Refrigerator Cold” (2021 – Instagram series) Her first public work was not a book or gallery show. It was a series of 12 Instagram posts, each a photograph of her refrigerator’s interior. The fridge is organized exactly as her mother left it: pickled plums on the second shelf, miso in the left drawer, a small container of leftover simmered squash wrapped in wax paper dated three days before her death. Seta Ichika - I Don-t Have A Mother Anymore- So...

One voicemail goes: “Mom, I don’t have you anymore, so I’ve started talking to your apron. It doesn’t answer either. But at least it smells like you — no, wait. That’s just the fabric softener. I bought the same kind. I’m sorry. I’m trying to trick my nose.” Her next project, announced in late 2024, is

This article explores the life, work, and profound cultural impact of Seta Ichika, a young creator who took the most personal tragedy—the death of her mother—and translated it into a universal question: What do we become when our first anchor is gone? The phrase “I don’t have a mother anymore” is not a plot twist. It is not a dramatic reveal. In Ichika’s 2022 autobiographical essay collection “Mukashino Watashi e” (To the Former Me) , the sentence appears on page 47, nestled between a memory of burning miso soup and a description of her mother’s favorite apron, still hanging on the kitchen hook three years after her death. Then, at 22, she began to write