Naomi Nakazato

(b 1992United States. Lives and works in Brooklyn)

Nakazato’s work maps the twin nature of her Japanese-American identity by interrupting traditional landscape motifs. She constructs monuments to fragmentation through the development, scrutiny and synthesis of patchy topographies pocked with voids, lapses, barriers and mistranslation.

Each of her pieces begins with an objective starting point, such as a stock photograph or a screenshot from Google Maps, which purports realness in its representation. This neutral medium is then conjoined with Nakazato’s own sentimental, idiosyncratic memories of her time in Japan.

Her works are made through analogue (graphite, acrylic, watercolour) and out-dated digital media (simulations of Mac and Microsoft paint), then layered and flattened through printmaking processes. She says: “This materials-based process is conceptually relevant to my interest in language and the inevitable palimpsest of lived experience, all arriving at a point of aesthetic distillation.”

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