Ideas. Memories. Emotions. Feelings. As we get older and look back upon our experiences we often find that fragmented and broken recollections form the vast puzzles of our lives.
Last year poet and photographer, artist and filmmaker, painter and illustrator Sayaka Maruyama found herself at a crossroad in her life and she decided to take a deep breath and find a way to tidy up her body of work.
Born in Niigata, Japan, Maruyama grew up in Tokyo, moved to The Netherlands with her family and as a grown up worked in London and New York, building her own archive of works, thoughts and ideas. She therefore attempted to come up with a method to catalogue and memorize her best and most powerful creations.
Recollecting wasn't easy, though: Maruyama realized that, throughout the years she had generated a vast corpus comprising many and multiple visions. The only way to take stock of her artistic practice and put some order into her personal disorder or finally grant to disorder the state of art, was reaching into her unconscious and giving an eternal and timeless form to the endless visual poetry she had created. The result of this process was a book entitled memorandom 0 that is now out on Konomad Editions.
I had the privilege of interviewing the artist for memorandom 0, and to write the Afterword for the book. It was a process that went on for a few months as both Maruyama and I do not think that everything has got to be produced quickly and following today's "insta" rhythms. So we got to know each other, a process that allowed me to discover her poetic, ethereal, enigmatic and romantic, strange and disquieting photographs, drawings, paintings, films and illustrations. I learnt to read through her colours, lines and silhouettes, in a nutshell I learnt to decode her lexicon and to speak her artistic language. I'm glad I took the journey and I'm overjoyed the book is finally out there.
We will do more posts in future on Sayaka Maruyama to discover the making of the book, her favourite artworks and inspirations and the models she often collaborates with - all of them incredibly strong women such as Melanie Gaydos. So we will try and discover Maruyama and her universe in future posts. In the meantime, you can buy the book from Konomad Editions, Idea Books or Printed Matters Inc in New York - enjoy memorandom 0!
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