Azuki Furuya

Azuki Furuya Biography

B. 1993, Sapporo, Japan – Lives and works in Tokyo, Japan

Azuki Furuya graduated with an MFA from Brooklyn College in 2019. Previously, she had received art degrees from Tama Art University in Tokyo, and University of the Arts in London. Born in Sapporo, Japan, she lives and works in Tokyo. Her ingenious works on paper explore the brightness of life and the fragility of existence, with the material process itself as a form of storytelling.

After drawing the composition from a photograph, she builds it up with layered bits of colored paper and fragments of the photograph, then meticulously sands down the papered surface until it is exposed like a derelict billboard, and paints inside and around the contours. The resulting artworks are highly textured and luminous, a testament to the duality of precariousness and persistence of life, identity and myth.

In addition, with the shavings leftover from the sanding, she remakes paper pulp, shapes it into a sculptural form. She transfers and draws the image onto the reconstituted surface. In her art, the images become ingredients in the never ending process of re-formation of identity.