Blacnk visually explores the sense of incomplete belonging. Living in Japan has accustomed me to ways of living and doing that can make me feel like a stranger in my own country when I return. As a non-Japanese citizen I will never completely belong here either. Hence, this exhibition tries to show this ambiguity through spaces I know but, at the same time, revealing them as unrecognizable. This paradoxical in-between state simultaneously procures me a strange feeling of fullness and emptiness.  

The digital prints possess black areas that might look artificially added onto the canvas, however, they are not; they follow the lines and contours from the original picture. Combined to the color scope of the prints, the black parts recall that paradox of being there, alive and not there, dead, concurrently knowing the surroundings and not knowing them. Furthermore, these black spaces also provide viewers an opportunity to create their own fictitious scenes within the pitch-dark color thus offering a possible distance reduction between them and the work.

Captions – sort of protruding holes– evoke multifaceted language cohabitation. The boxes’ front face paintings, however, take root in kanji etymology and are an expression of knowledge transferred to artistic movements. Consequently, this Japanese language appropriation depicts imperfection and mysterious painterly concepts.