Yearning presents two separate bodies of work by Kiyomi Fukui. As a multi-disciplinary artist and educator from Long Beach, California, Fukui’s body of work explores the emotions generated by the experience of ephemerality and impermanence. Through carefully composed imagery of organic matter, her work exemplifies the delicate nature of personal relationships, reminds us of the impermanence of these beautiful moments, and inspires us to cherish them deeply.
Her work as a printmaker is astounding. Her prints leverage natural pigments made with plants from her and her partner’s beloved wild garden to create profoundly sensitive compositions. She explores many methods of printmaking including relief printing, lithography, monotype printing, and etching as well as traditional Japanese woodblock printing (some examples of her wood blocks are displayed here). Her monumental piece, Garden, was made while she worked through the grief of losing her mother to cancer. The work contemplates the beauty of death and rebirth which we see every day in the plants that surround us.
Suspended in flight throughout the lobby at Boston Court are a series of small paper cranes which were made as a part of the interactive installation Conversation on Conflict. The text on the paper cranes is a written record of a conversation Fukui had with her estranged father who lives in Japan; the interview details their family history during World War II and the familial conflict that arose when her grandfather was forced to flee from Korea to Japan. The origami crane, a symbol of hope and healing, was a fitting form for the conversation to take.
