Two elements I love most about paintings are experimenting with color and developing the faces of my subjects. While I don’t have a theme when I paint, I am always thinking about my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, and our ancestors’ beauty, strength, struggles, love. – Asuka Anastacia Ogawa
The universe created in Japanese-Brazilian artist Asuka Anastacia Ogawa’s paintings is unmistakable. Androgynous children gaze out at the viewer, surrounded by simplified backdrops depicted in muted colors. Menino (Boy) shows a dark-skinned boy with a white arm protectively, or controllingly, draped over his head. Like much of Ogawa’s work, the scene is ambiguous, giving it a simultaneously tender and foreboding presence. Much has been made of Ogawa’s hybrid, cosmopolitan identity – she was born in Tokyo, raised in Brazil, attended high school in Sweden, and studied at Saint Martin’s in London – and it is easy to imagine how this complex sense of self contributes to the mysterious, yet wholly-formed, world in her work. Ogawa had her first solo show at Henry Taylor’s studio in Los Angeles in 2017. Her work is in the public collection of X Museum in Beijing.