Artist: Kiyomi Fukui Media: Indisciplinary art Gallery: Somewhere in Highland Park? Website: www.kiyomifukui.com Instagram: @kiyomimis
The name of this artist is Kiyomi Fukui. Her art can be found on her website mentioned above. Kiyomi’s art is very beautiful and special to her. Her art is very representative of her. In other words, it is mostly autobiographical art. Her art is good spirited and gives off nice and pleasant energy. Her art is representational of her in the sense that she is all about being open to people and having conversations with people and being a friendly good person. Her art is very much the same as her way of being. Some of her art revolves around both of her parents. One of them is a very beautiful project, where she grew plants out of her mother’s molded thumb, and the other project was about her dad and how their relationship has been and how they haven’t always understood each other.
In her art projects, she did some projects about her parents. Her father is Korean but lived in Japan without citizenship. Japan has a term for Koreans who live in Japan because of the history between both people during a time of war. Her dad and her never really saw eye to eye. But she wanted to understand humanity through his eyes and she made a bunch of origami cranes our of conversation papers. Her father sent her an essay explaining to her his views and it broke her heart to understand how her father views the world and why he is the way he is. Another one of her projects is about her mother when she had passed away. She felt very broken as most people would feel. She took a mold of her mother’s thumb and mixed it with her thumb, which is the same one, and planted seeds in them to symbolize the idea of rebirth. Other pieces of her art revolve around people gathering together and talking to each other and getting to know others, which I think is great.
Her art is something to look up to. Apart from being an artist, she is a person who tries to get others to really talk about their feelings and socialize with each other. I think that her art is a healthy thing to really talk about and go through during this time of isolation. Her art is very personal to her and can really resonate with other people. Since her art is mostly made out of simple things and with live people participating there isn’t much color in her art. My most favorite art project is the one about her parents because I know of people that have gone through what Kiyomi has gone through and I think that my friends would really enjoy her art projects.
In sum, I really enjoyed her coming into class and talking to us about her personal life and the art she has done and the type of art she likes to do. I would say her art is a very good way to help people release stress and release any negative energy that they have built up. I admire her work as it is made for people to participate and socialize with each other, which is a very important thing to humans and also helps with peoples’ mental health.
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