Yoshi Nakagawa

Opening reception: Saturday April 21st, 2018, 7pm at Galería Arte de Oaxaca. Showing for a month.

Paper Dolls

As a child, I played with Japanese paper dolls, and paper seemed to be my preference over plastic Barbies and high-tech Atari video games. I still have an affinity for paper, as I print copper etchings and woodblocks, fold origami into mobiles, or create collages from Washi (Japanese paper) with Japanese motifs. Paper Dolls is a retrospective of my childhood, my roots, and my femininity. Creating art has been a form of therapy, a way to express and nurture my inner child without language or criticism. In my experience, the process of creating equates to the process of healing.

Flotante

In conjunction with Paper Dolls, Flotante is a series of mobiles that display paper and textile in a three-dimensional way so that Washi and Pojagi (Korean silk) can interact with light and shadow, breeze and movement. Mobile-making has transformed my two-dimensional patterning artwork into floating sculptures, as Ukiyo-e (Japanese woodblock prints) also literally means “pictures of the floating world.”