In Conversation
Naomi Okubo has been creating works that explore the themes of identity and relationships with others. Her paintings, sculptures, and installations often feature multiple portraits of herself in imaginary, fantasized settings full of decorative patterns and vibrant colors that blur the boundary between the self and the surrounding environment. This ambiguity regarding identity stems from her experiences of struggling to establish selfhood in relation to others during her adolescence. One of her turning points was when she developed her interest in Wardian cases or what she calls “closely glazed spaces.”
Okubo sees a parallel between the nature of the greenhouse environment and the domestic setting — a controlled, comfortable place kept safe from the external world. Okubo states that it is difficult to realize certain social pressures and influences that affect one’s identity in such an ideal microcosm. Her fictional open room structures are reminders of the restrictive ties that remain hidden from society.
The exhibition Intimate Space, Entangling Threads at the Fou Gallery, New York, presents an overview of Okubo’s recent works connected under the theme of “home.” This interview brings Okubo and curators Sharon Liu and Hanna Hirakawa to discuss further the artist’s creative process, ideas, and interests that channel into her art-making.
Sharon Liu: We would like to know about your beginning as an artist and how you developed your practice over the years. You studied at Musashino Art University. Could you tell us more about your early experiences with painting and how they influenced you?
Naomi Okubo: Looking back on my memories of my time as a university student, I was fortunate to learn from a wonderful artist and professor, Naofumi Maruyama, who showed us what an artist’s life is like and told us to continue practicing no matter what happens if we want to become artists. I use the same kind of canvas, just like him. Of course, his technique was pretty different because he used highly diluted paint and painted acrylic colors directly on raw canvas. This technique left his colors with no sharp edges. I was very influenced by that kind of texture.
Another artist who greatly influenced me was the French artist Édouard Vuillard (1868-1940). He is known for his attention to the spatial effects of interior spaces with flattened planes of color, pattern, and form. I learned from him how to recreate the atmosphere of a domestic environment using a myriad colors, patterns, and details to evoke a sense of intimacy and familiarity within my compositions.
Sharon Liu: What is your process of depicting textures and creating artworks?
Naomi Okubo: The process begins with collecting images from various media and creating a digital collage in Photoshop. This is similar to the way we consume images every day from the internet and social media, both of which can easily make us lose our sense of reality. I feel that painting all those images, including my portrait, is a process of reclaiming reality by touching the raw canvas and feeling the texture with my brush as I paint. This time-consuming process is important to me as a counter to the fast culture that is also expanding into the art world.
My works are kind of photographic, which, for me, feels more realistic because it connects to our way of consuming images in daily life. I always want my art to be accessible to the audience.
Sharon Liu: How do you select images, in other words, different patterns, to paint? Can you tell us what criteria you use?
Naomi Okubo: The images I use, the furniture, and the patterns are all very Westernized in most of my work. That also comes from my family. My father was born in Yokohama during the Taishō period before World War II ended. His father worked at the Swiss Embassy. My father enjoyed listening to jazz and other imported music. After WWII ended, he wanted to learn how to speak English, so he worked at the U.S. military in Yokohama. He always had a very positive image of the West. My mother was born in Kagawa Prefecture on Shikoku Island, and she also admired Western culture. So, my home was always decorated with Western furniture, which is also why I tend to paint Western-style interiors. It feels more familiar and natural to me.
Sharon Liu: The recycling and reuse of fabrics constitutes a large part of your practice, as seen in your Pattern Paper series, the work Patchwork, and even in the clothing worn by figures in many of your other paintings. How do you find a sense of resonance and continuity through the act of recycling and reuse?
Naomi Okubo: I would like for the audience to find a sense of resonance in my work. They might be surprised by the same kind of fabrics appearing across different works. It’s a playful way to make connections.
For me, recycling is a lot about preserving time and resources, in contrast with a fast-paced culture. I arrived at this idea after reading the novel Momo by Michael Ende, which I’ve read countless times since I was a child. It critiques maximizing time for some hypothetical future benefit instead of trying to cherish time. Over the years, I realized that this hidden theme about time and capitalism was very intriguing. Ende and artist Joseph Beuys had similar critiques of capitalism. I think those critiques made a lasting impact on me. I realized that I love spending time making art, even if it requires more time and effort.
For example, I make my own clothes and enjoy cooking. Both tasks can be outsourced, but I prefer doing everything by myself. Sometimes, it’s very hard, but it feels like my small protest against society’s overpowering system.
Hanna Hirakawa: I would like to ask about your use of multiple mediums in relation to the exhibition title Intimate Space, Entangling Threads. The title gestures to the motifs in your works and also refers to the connections among your works at the show. Could you tell us more about this connection?
Naomi Okubo: In the exhibition, the main theme revolves around “family,” which has always interested me. In recent years, I have wanted to see things through the perspective of “family,” for instance, the relationship between two countries, such as the United States and Japan, or maybe even between Russia and Ukraine. In other words, it interests me to extrapolate the relationship among family members onto larger dynamics in order to form my own understanding. We could say the family structure is the basic structure to see relationships between other people, within our society, or even between countries.
In this exhibition, I interpret the complexity inherent in the concept of “family,” as well as motifs I have explored recently, such as botanical gardens, as contradictions inherent in human nature. Both are controlled and enclosed spaces where meanings intertwine in intricate ways, hence the title Intimate Space, Entangling Threads.
Hanna Hirakawa: In your earlier works, you were focusing on the ambiguous nature of your identity, especially in the works titled Closely Glazed Space. I feel that your interest is shifting towards power relations between people and other groups as you expand on the idea of the family to relations between countries, almost like an analogy. How would you describe this shift in interest?
Naomi Okubo: With time, my interest has gradually shifted toward specific societal or political issues I encounter daily. One of my deepest concerns is about Okinawa. When I went there for the first time, I didn’t really know the history between Okinawa and mainland Japan. Later, I read about the history of the land and was shocked by what the mainland Japanese did to Okinawa during the war period. It was as if the Japanese government was using Okinawa as a gift to the United States.
Another influential encounter for me was the Black Lives Matter movement, which happened while I was staying in New York in 2020. People were protesting for their identity that had been socially and politically oppressed for a long time. I realized that this historical issue in Okinawa was also a result of the majority’s discriminatory attitude toward minorities.
Hanna Hirakawa: Your most recent painting, Little Mama—Closely Glazed Space, features Little Mama, an actual doll that you created to represent your mother. Could you tell us more about the narrative in this work?
Naomi Okubo: The doll Little Mama, symbolizing the mother figure in this artwork, is exaggerated in size. This directly portrays mothers’ significant influences within the family and is also presented as a symbol of control. The large dolls are depicted as trying to control me. Another one of my self-portraits is just sewing something, and the one exiting out of the painting on the left is trying to be freed of restrictive ties. Rather than drawing out a narrative, I would say my work is composed of symbolic motifs that are usually seemingly vibrant and beautiful objects with hidden meanings.
The background of the botanical garden represents an environment perceived as “comfortable and safe,” as my own mother had repeatedly told me. The recurring grid patterns of tiles, flooring, window frames, and so on convey a sense of enclosed oppression. I create these layered or nested structures by including the small Wardian case in this imaginary space to emphasize that trapped feeling. In the exhibition, I used a similar technique by creating a visual mark of the Fou gallery space within the painting. This nested composition creates an impression that the symbolism continues or repeats endlessly. Then, you never know whether you are outside or still inside the greenhouse—maybe there is another larger greenhouse outside!
Hanna Hirakawa: The nested, multi-layered structure within your work adds an objective perspective that allows people to project their own selves and experiences into the painting. It also reminded me of the concept of “remediation” in media theory that was first conceptualized by the philosopher Marshall McLuhan and coined by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin (Remediation: Understanding New Media, 1999). Bolter and Grusin saw that McLuhan’s theory—that the ‘content’ of any medium is always another medium (McLuhan, Understanding Media, 107)—can be applied to the nature of new media in the digital age.
Naomi Okubo: I started doing these multi-layered nested structures after a commission work I did for Zeit magazine, which introduced designers’ furniture. They requested that I incorporate images of furniture into my painting, which was quite an interesting experience for me. I happily took on the commission because the process of drawing and painting real furniture in my works was already something I did in my own practice. Receiving the magazine issue with images of my works felt strange. This is because I always collect images from the internet, magazines, and other media, and so when I saw my painting in a magazine, I felt goosebumps finding that it was the other way around. After this experience, I began to think about creating these structures within my work to confuse the viewer when they take a closer look.
Naomi Okubo: Intimate Space, Entangling Threads. June 8–August 3, 2024, at Fou Gallery 410 Jefferson Ave#1, Brooklyn
About the artist: Naomi Okubo (b. 1985, Tokyo, Japan) earned her M.F.A from Musashino Art University in 2011. She lived and worked in New York from 2017 to 2019. She returned to Japan in 2020. Her work has continued to exhibit in Asia, Europe, and the U.S.A., including Fou Gallery, New York (2024), GALLERY MoMo Ryogoku, Tokyo (2023), and ELSA ART GALLERY, Taipei (2022). Obuko’s work can also be found in such periodicals as Pen, Contemporary Art Curator Magazine, Financial Times, Juxtapoz Magazine, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Blanc Magazine. Her work is in the public collection of Hallands Konstmuseum (Sweden).
About the curators: Sharon Xiaorong Liu is a curator, researcher, and writer based in Amherst, Massachusetts, and New York. Her recent exhibitions include “Retrieving and Revitalizing: From Yurakucho to Yangon” (YAU Studio, Tokyo, 2023) and “Curating the Past from the Future” (Fou Gallery, New York, 2022). She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Art History and Math from Wellesley College and obtained her master’s degree in East Asian Studies from Yale University.
Hanna Hirakawa is a curator, translator, and creator based in Tokyo, Japan. Recent exhibitions include “Creative Commons: Spaces for Collective Engagement with Gender Issues in Asia” (Gallery of the Center for Gender Studies, Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo, 2024), “Retrieving and Revitalizing: From Yurakucho to Yangon” (YAU Studio, Tokyo, 2023), and “Subversive Bodies: Art, Gender, and Media” (The 5th Floor, Tokyo, 2022). She graduated from the Art History department at the University of Tokyo and earned her Master’s in Curation, Global Arts at the Tokyo University of Arts.