by Alek(Alexandre Levi)

Silent Echoes is a series of risograph prints by French Polish artist Alexandre Levi (Alek), taken in Hakodate, Japan. The works are based on photographs of an akiya, an abandoned house, one among more than 8.5 million across Japan, now representing over 13 percent of the nation’s housing stock. An akiya often comes into being when families move to larger cities for work, when houses are left behind after the death of relatives, or when the cost of upkeep makes them unsustainable. In Hakodate, a historic port city on the island of Hokkaido, population decline has left many homes vacant, turning them into echoes of shifting demographics and urban transition. The works focus on overlooked fragments: letterboxes bound with bandages, taped windows, faint shadows. These details are not incidental; they are signs of lives once lived, of structures gradually slipping from care into absence. Risography, traditionally associated with zines, posters and graphic ephemera, becomes here both medium and metaphor. Known for its grainy textures, slight shifts in alignment, and limited but vibrant palettes, risography carries with it the energy of immediacy, repetition and accessibility. By recontextualizing this process within fine art, Alek turns its visual qualities into a way to echo the fragility, persistence and layered history of the abandoned houses he depicts. Printed in carefully chosen palettes, sometimes a single tone and sometimes layered in two colors such as neon pink and aqua blue, the images detach themselves from naturalistic color to heighten form, texture and atmosphere. The risograph process amplifies traces of repair, distortion and decay, transforming them into vivid surfaces of meaning. Silent Echoes is about continuity. It reflects on forgotten moments and on how houses remain as witnesses to urban change and social transition. Abandonment here is not disappearance but resonance: proof of resilience, reminders of care, and records that echo through the shifting landscape of urban evolution.