The Spiritual Displacement of Kumi Machida

Relation, 2006

An exhibition of art by Kumi Machida will leave your head full of odd impressions and ideas that don’t quite fit together. The 35-year-old artists’ paintings are peopled by strange, androgynous beings, often viewed from unusual angles, and bizarre elements, like a baby riding a giant chicken, a rabbit’s paw being pulled out of someone’s ear, and people with extra, elongated, or displaced fingers.

This surreal universe can now be seen at the recently relocated Nishimura Gallery in a show of the artists’ latest works, supplemented by a few older ones.

The Gumna-born artist was one of six young Nihonga-influenced artists featured at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s “No Borders” exhibition earlier this year. The show also featured stunning works by Fuyuko Matsui and Hisashi Tenmyouya, among others. Machida was selected because she uses traditional materials, like kumohada linen paper, Indian ink, and mineral pigments, and because her sinuous lines and poetic use of empty space reflect the formal elements of Nihonga.

Despite these traditional influences, Machida’s art is far from traditional in its subject matter. Her painting, The Postman (1999 – 2006), which features an elaborately drawn rooster, is a clear tribute to the Edo-period artist Ito Jakucha, famous for his colorful and dynamic depictions of fowl. But Machida’s work, largely in monochrome except for the occasional touch of color, adds something new by setting a baby mailman on his back.

This work, however, is innocuous compared to the more unnerving surrealism in works like Coming Home (2005). At first glance this looks like a hand holding a ring on the train – a normal enough sight in Japan with its crowded commuter trains – until you realize that the ring is actually made up of one of the fingers that has become elongated.

“Each person has their own mental filter, and when they see my art it knocks that filter a little,” Machida explains.

It is also possible to see her art as a world in which the restless spirits of her mind hover, creating mischief, strange distortions, and playing visual tricks, rather like unquiet or unholy spirits. The finger in Coming Home has a similar quality to rokurokubi, the long-necked woman of Japanese supernatural tradition.

Rokurokubi (not by Machida)

This idea of her art as a wandering and restless spirit, expressing itself by creating surrealistic chaos, finds a resonance in her background.

“I don’t really have a spiritual or emotional home anywhere,” she confesses. “When I was born my parents didn’t want me. They wanted a boy. They always said to me, ‘women are useless.’ I always felt I was denying myself and my gender. These paintings are my only home and my voice.”

Some of the paintings clearly refer to her troubled relationship with her parents, like Unit (2003) which shows an outline of a father and a daughter holding hands. The key point in this picture is the bandage that binds the father and daughter’s hands together. This suggests that the natural connection has been brutally severed and inexpertly mended.

The largest work at this exhibition Relation (2006) is a development of this idea. As in the earlier work, a child holds the hand of an adult. But the fingers offered by the adult are seen emerging from the spherical bubble around the child’s head. Machida explains that this is because the child is mentally rejecting the relationship.

Such works use the theme of a naturally close relationship that has broken down. Such relationships can cause the most pain, a pain that Machida still seems to be fighting with.

“I have to get over it,” she admits. “I’m not a child anymore. I’m over 35 years but I’m still confused by it.”

For Machida the best relationships are those that retain some distance. The last picture to be completed for the exhibition In the Room (2006) captures this idea perfectly. It shows two people whose differences in sensory capability allow them to create a harmonious distance between each other.

“The person on the right doesn’t have any ears,” Machida explains. “The person on the left doesn’t have any eyes, but this means they can love each other without getting too close.”