The artist Makoto Fujimura has spent decades exploring what he calls ”broken beauty”—the observation that beauty is often born not despite the fractures each one of us experiences in this life but through them.
On the opening night of the 2026 Understory festival, Fujimura reflected on what this vision of broken beauty might mean for the world at this particular moment. Rather than asking how quickly our deepest cracks can be repaired, he wondered whether we might first learn to behold them in a different light. He explores the pulverized mineral layers of the traditional Japanese practice of Nihonga; the cracked and silent Liberty Bell as an image of fragile democracy; lament as faithfulness; finding in our wounds potential sites of healing; and the call to carry tender light into the darkest places.
This reflection originally appeared in our opening-night episode, “What Is Struggling to Be Born?” framed by an address from Fr. Tomáš Halík.
