The Americanization of Fumi Nakamura

‘LET EVERYTHING GO’ by FUMI NAKAMURA

Wolves, the ethereal, the soft and the lush—the chapters of the hipster girl handbook all populate the pencil drawings in Fumi Nakamura’s “Himitsu,” up now at DDR Projects. But in her hands, they’re personal.

“Himitsu” explores dangerous ground: our struggles with ourselves—the kind of icky stuff you’re supposed to either anguish over privately, or perhaps bury deep inside and become passive-aggressive. Nakamura chose to deal with it.

“I felt like my mind and body and soul weren’t corresponding to each other at all,” she said recently of her fight to assimilate at age 11, when her family moved to California from Japan. (She’s 22 now.) “It was unbalanced. My inner self was not functioning well.”

And release the wolves. “Himitsu,” the Japanese word for “secret,” portrays some of Nakamura’s search for her place in the world, through the eyes of a pack of lovelorn 20-somethings: bandaged, lost in their thoughts, and followed by wolves.

In one piece, Struggle Against Reality/Unreality, five mischievous wolves prey on various distanced and aloof characters. One wolf is lusting and carnal; another is secretive and cagey. A third is obviously onto something good; he’s passed out on the side. It’s as unsettling as emigrating to 1990s California must have been to Nakamura.

Continuing the wolf metaphor, Severe Punishment and Lasting Bliss shows the animal’s warm and tender side; it depicts a listless girl snuggling up with a plump, harmless wolf, who seems to be drawing rainbow ribbons from the girl’s eyes. There’s a sweet interaction, and a trust between beast and beauty.

Yet another frame is human, but incomplete; it shows two young lovers sitting together, their limbs incomplete and their bodies merged at the head. Where the boy begins and the girl ends is unclear, sometimes like life. Here, it’s Nakamura’s life.

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Tags: ddr projects, visual arts