Where is Everybody?

Forgive the delay in posting. Finals week us upon us so most of my time has been spent between studying and working. However, I did complete and present my final project for Advanced Drawing: a response to Yoshitomo Nara’s work:

Where is Everybody? 60×36 Acrylic and prisma-color pencil on board. 2007.

Everyone had to create a response to a contemporary artist which explored the idea of a time change within our life done in the style of the artist. Nara’s work and ideas synced with my own, I myself moving at a young age from a large city to a very rural state. Like Nara, I spent a lot of time alone.

I   honestly hope this work communicates the same feelings that Nara’s does.

I Don’t Mind If You Forget Me…

Why do I love the works of Yoshitomo Nara? Because they speak about the desperate loneliness of being a kid. Growing up in rural Japan during the 1960s, Nara was a latch-key-child who spent most of his time reading comic books and watching the newly emerging anime cartoons. Nara, along with other Japanese artists of his generation, were influenced not only by Japanese culture but also the influx of American pop such as the cartoons of Warner Brothers and Walt Disney.

While many compare Nara’s work to those of Takashi Murakami, founder of the Japanese contemporary art movement Super-Flat, and other Japanese artists whom draw their inspiration from the manga anime style, Yoshitomo claims his work couldn’t be farther from the Super-Flat. Most super-flat works explore the Otaku culture and display scenes of Japanese sex fetishes and consumer culture in Japan.

Nara’s works are injected with narrative, usually dipicting the face of a sloe-eyed child before a neutral background. These children are always alone, always engaged in solitary activities, and always give the expression of betrayal. Who are these children? Why are they alone? What have they lost?

Even in the 3-D, the figures do not engage with each other but are always lost in their own solitary world.

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We have all been there before. We know what it’s like. We all as children have been damaged for some reason. Abandoned. Ignored. We are lost. What has been taken from us? What did we lose? Where did we go wrong?