Hi! This is Ale.
I would like to translate for you an article that Miss Toyoda of Itoshima Arts Farm wrote about Suyeon’s exhibition.
Then, we went to see Suyeon Na’s exhibition. Visitors walked for one minute to the residence house, holding their drink of choice in their hands. Walking with a drink in your hand under the winter sky pursuing more art to enjoy feels great.
We first trespassed through the porch into the guest room to see the paintings.
The residence house is a prominent rural house. A raccoon dog will greet you at the entrance, and there’s an Inari (fox spirit) statue in the front yard. And in the living of this Japanese house you will find photographs of all generations of the family.
Suyeon’s drawings are filled with this kind of Japanese local details.
The Inari from the front yard and a sofa from the living room.
The sofa from the picture above. Everybody was saying “there’s a sofa like this at my grandma’s place!”.
Her paintings show a mixture of cultures with elements like Nijo’s landscapes, women in kimonos and coffee, always through her personal lens. She says she found particularly impressive the scene filled with the tied omikuji (fortune slips) that she found at the Shinto shrine. By the way, the model for this picture is one of Studio Kura’s staff. She becomes a motif for foreign artists quite often.
And then we went upstairs using the steep stairs you will find in any Japanese traditional house.
Lotus flowers of various colors. This room is next to the one she was staying at.
It was her idea to use such a personal space for the exhibition.
It was a very feminine and playful piece of work, using old clothes and cloth found during her stay. If you keep looking at it you will find appliques too — I couldn’t get bored of this installation.
The red and white threads were shaping a flow that felt like a river. When asked about this, Suyeon thought for a moment and then answered “maybe the threads are connected to the starry sky?”. I found it very charming of Suyeon that she uses her intuition to care about the details in this way. When I saw her showing her sense on her work in such a frank way, I thought that was very artistic.
I digress, but Suyeon can’t ride a bike. The bikes at Studio Kura are the main means of transportation for all artists staying here. So it looks like Suyeon didn’t get out a lot during her stay and instead stayed in her room working on all these detailed pieces.