Vee Hua 華婷婷Our Hands Will Eventually Destroy Everything Beautiful, a new body of work by Japanese illustrator Fumi Nakamura, is the result of a personal period of growth. After a mental breakdown and a year of hiatus from art, Nakamura realized that she needed to leave behind a past of pain and suffering to grow into the person she is now becoming.
“I was chasing after unrealistic thoughts and hopes during that year… Then one day, something inside of me snapped and I came to the realization that I need to move on and get rid of my ‘problems’ — beautiful memories with someone I loved, childhood trauma, pains of growing up and literally everything since they were the core source of my regrets and grudges…” Nakamura says in an interview with Thinkspace Gallery. “… I had (and still do have) a problem with holding onto the past heavily to the point where it was making me so miserable. I wanted to change and stop running away from reality — in order to do that, I decided to “destroy.” So I can maintain pieces of life together, survive in a place called “life.” I became honest, out-spoken and decided to cut all the things out that are affecting me and my life negatively.”
These new pieces by Nakamura use negative space and delicate graphite and colored pencil drawings to accentuate the”intense but fragile,” and ultimately, serve as captive reminders of human fragility. Though these images are beautiful, there is a darkness to them; animals are shot straight through by arrows, eyeballs are held in hands, and symbols of death are given significant attention.
This show is now on display in Thinkspace Gallery in Culver City (6009 Washington Blvd.), with an opening reception tonight from 6:00pm to 9:00pm.
Navi Esparza