Since 2023, I have worked with students at Kyushu Sangyo University to make paintings from experiences recounted by atomic-bomb survivors. Through this work I visited Nagasaki and encountered landscapes belonging to different times. Lantern grew from those experiences. Alongside testimonies, documents and remains connected to the bombing, I saw the vivid spectacle of the present-day Lantern Festival. The city at the time of the bombing and the city of the festival differ profoundly, yet both are bound to Nagasaki and remain with me as distinct images.
In the painting, I offset and layer the image of a large festival lantern. Some contours coincide while others separate, preventing the image from settling into a single form. I do not determine the ground colour in advance, but work with the colours and overlaps that emerge during painting. Rather than combine what I received from testimony and documents with the Nagasaki I saw firsthand, I place them in the painting as images of different times.
Lantern (Qilin), 2025effect pigments and acrylic on canvas, 50 × 65.2 cm (19.7 × 25.7 in)
Since 2023, I have worked with students at Kyushu Sangyo University to make paintings from experiences recounted by atomic-bomb survivors. Through this work I visited Nagasaki and encountered landscapes belonging to different times. Lantern grew from those experiences. Alongside testimonies, documents and remains connected to the bombing, I saw the vivid spectacle of the present-day Lantern Festival. The city at the time of the bombing and the city of the festival differ profoundly, yet both are bound to Nagasaki and remain with me as distinct images.
In the painting, I offset and layer the image of a large festival lantern. Some contours coincide while others separate, preventing the image from settling into a single form. I do not determine the ground colour in advance, but work with the colours and overlaps that emerge during painting. Rather than combine what I received from testimony and documents with the Nagasaki I saw firsthand, I place them in the painting as images of different times.