In yesterday's post we looked at a preview of the fourth issue of Pan & The Dream, a luxuriously produced supersized magazine published annually and edited by Nathalie Agussol. As mentioned in that post, the new issue focuses on the theme of ghosts and my second contribution to the magazine is an interview with Suzume Uchida.
The Tokyo-born and based artist has a cult following in Japan as she revolutionized the traditional image of ghosts and spirits by looking at her own reflection and creating drawings in ink, water and oil colors and she also contributed in the last few years to different collections by Yohji Yamamoto. Her works were indeed printed on garments such as shirts and coats.
In the Pan & The Dream interview Uchida talks not just about her collaboration with Yohji Yamamoto, but also about ghosts from Japanese folklore (the artist's favourite story is The Ghost Tale of the Wet Nurse Tree about a man murdered by a villainous samurai who falls in love with the man's wife) and about being haunted in life by a malignant ghost, that of anorexia. Uchida fought against this ghost and now hopes that her works about this theme will empower other people who are facing mental issues at the moment. "We all desire at some point to get another chance in life and I hope my artworks can help people feel reborn," Uchida told me about her art.
You can get a copy of Pan & The Dream (with a cover by Marcus Schaefer) from selected stores and bookshops such as Magalleria, Athenaeum Nieuwscentrum and Gigina.
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