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Kanako NISHI "i(Ai)"

Kanako NISHI "i(Ai)"
Period
Saturday, January 21, 2017 - Sunday, February 5, 2017
Hours
14:00-18:00
Admission
Free
Venue
211: AI KOWADA GALLERY / Open Letter

AI KOWADA GALLERY is pleased to present 'i(Ai)', an exhibition of an art work by a Naoki Award winning writer Kanako Nishi.

Nishi, who received the aforementioned award with 'Good Bye!' in 2015 launched her career as a writer with 'Aoi' (2004), after which she steadily increased her reputation as a writer through works such as 'Tsutenkaku' and 'Fukuwarai' which won the 2007 Oda Sakunosuke Prize and the 2013 Hayao Kawai Award in Literature respectively. 'The Yellow Elephant' which was made into a film starring Aoi Miyazaki and Osamu Mukai has helped to increase her level of readership.

This show is the first one which presents Nishi's artistic output in the field of visual art, about which the novelist is as passionate as she is about her writing. Nishi sometimes draws pictures for the front cover design of her books and the images all contribute well in inviting her readers to be immersed in the fictional world of her creation. She has also recently provided a front cover illustration for Kirara magazine at its request.

The exhibit is a brand new mural installation covering the whole of the gallery's walls, by which the artist intended to establish the visual equivalent of the final scene of her recent novel entitled 'i (Ai)'. Nishi, who has never received any formal art education, boldly draws with pastel crayons on used cardboard picked up from local supermarkets. The colored layers she creates with the medium give a bright and strong impression as if they are outbursts of energy from the creator's body and spirit. One may relate her way of working with that of graffiti artists who freely express themselves with color spray cans.

It has been observed that there is at the core of all Nishi's creative output, a sense of a quest for her true self. As most explicit in 'Good Bye!', her writings have always encouraged people going through an identity crisis who have lost their way to be just the way they are. This attitude of the writer continues in 'i (Ai)', in which the main character named Ai, a Syrian girl adopted by an American/Japanese couple struggles to gain her identity and spiritual liberty through the years in which the world faced tragic events such as 9/11, the Syrian civil war and the great east Japan earthquake.

The mural that is installed wraps the whole gallery space in full 360°and may well be recognized as fully revealing the writer/artist's true self. The experience of being immersed in this rich visual field promises pure bliss for both the fans of her books and those who have yet to experience her literary world.

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