My painterly practice including installation, I develop beautiful and seductive images that mask darker themes relating to adolescence are connected to greater problems and inconsistencies in society. It is common for teenagers to be bullied and ignored at school, even now. I was one of the targets as well as the others, but when I changed my outfit, people changed their attitude toward me. Seemingly, our relationship has become better. 

This horrible experience provided an opportunity to radically contemplate how appearance including fashion and lifestyle are affected our perspective and our ways of perceiving the others. 

My painting begins with photographic sources taken from various forms of mass media and advertisement to create colorful and ideal scenes by digital-collage. My self-portrait appears in paintings as an appropriate character in the environment. After all this preparation for paintings, I depict all of the parts by my hand, using a thick cotton canvas unsuitable with my detail-oriented painting for emphasizing the texture of its material rather than the image on the canvas. The process evokes questions of our daily image-consumption in compensation for our reality, and how much we/ or our identity are influenced by media information. 

In my recent installation, the same image appeared in multiple paintings/ or into space as an object creating "Mise en abyme" environment provocative questioning for a viewer what is real and virtual, or fact and fiction. 

By embracing this allegorical approach, I attempt to reveal the underlying interpellation covered by exquisite representation.

Naomi Okubo.

2017