The fog Sculptures of Fujiko Nakaya
A Japanese artist uses air, water, atmosphere and time to produce work at once ephemeral and mysterious.
Fujiko Nakaya (Sapporo, Japan, 1933) is among few artists in the world to use fog to make visual art. The medium, beyond its ephemeral nature, has a ghostly, fleeting, and blurred presence–and it’s capable of endowing whatever it surrounds with similar qualities. It might be said that Nakaya doesn’t so much work with fog (as a tool), but that she subtly collaborates in a phenomenon that’s half-meteorological and half-artistic.
With her father (the first scientist to produce artificial snowflakes), Nakaya traveled to the United States where she began studying art in the 1950s, before returning to Japan in 1960. The outset of her career saw, already, the outline of her later fixation with nature. She painted withered flowers and, especially, climatic phenomena: paintings of clouds.
Her first meteorological installation, the one which would turn her into an artist of fog, was completed for Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT), an organization promoting collaborations between artists and scientists, most of them engineers. In 1970, EAT designed the Pepsi-Cola pavilion for Expo ‘70 in Osaka. It was the city’s first international exhibition and a transcendent event for Japan’s artistic avant-garde. Nakaya decided to flood the entire pavilion with fog, and did so with the help of an atmospheric physicist named Thomas Mee.
Based on this experience, Nakaya began using the same technology developed for that first work, and with some modifications, used it in more and more fog installations. The decades that followed saw Nakaya achieving international fame as a video artist and as an advocate for alternative art practices. She continued building spectacular fog installations which traveled to the U.S., Europe, Japan, and Australia. In 1990, working with architect, Atsushi Kitagawara, she created a park enveloped in a dense haze that descended twice every hour. The work allowed visitors to be lost and then rediscovered within the clouds, and spoke quietly of death and rebirth.
Nakaya’s work is always based on several decisions: the placement of the tubes for emit this incorporeal substance within a given space, emission times, volumes and density of fog. These are the parameters she works with, and which together result in compositions made simply of tiny floating drops of water.
Events that hover somewhere between Land Art and conceptual art, Nakaya’s sculptures aren’t merely beautiful objects to be seen and exhibited: the works need to be entered and, like the water of a river or the sea, they’re going to be different for everyone who goes in. For Nakaya, fog is above all a means of transmitting light and shadow (physically and metaphorically). Her nebulous installations are there to transform spaces, flooding them with a sea suspended in the air, like visions of something which can’t quite be seen.
Images: 1) Philip Maiwald-Wikimedia Commons 2) Bertie Mabootoo-Wikimedia Commons 3) Pete D-flickr
Related Articles
Pictorial spiritism (a woman's drawings guided by a spirit)
There are numerous examples in the history of self-taught artists which suggest an interrogation of that which we take for granted within the universe of art. Such was the case with figures like
Astounding fairytale illustrations from Japan
Fairy tales tribal stories— are more than childish tales. Such fictions, the characters of which inhabit our earliest memories, aren’t just literary works with an aesthetic and pleasant purpose. They
A cinematic poem and an ode to water: its rhythms, shapes and textures
Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water. - John Keats Without water the equation of life, at least life as we know it, would be impossible. A growing hypothesis holds that water, including the
Watch beauty unfold through science in this "ode to a flower" (video)
The study of the microscopic is one of the richest, most aesthetic methods of understanding the world. Lucky is the scientist who, upon seeing something beautiful, is able to see all of the tiny
To invent those we love or to see them as they are? Love in two of the movies' favorite scenes
So much has been said already, of “love” that it’s difficult to add anything, much less something new. It’s possible, though, perhaps because even if you try to pass through the sieve of all our
This app allows you to find and preserve ancient typographies
Most people, even those who are far removed from the world of design, are familiar with some type of typography and its ability to transform any text, help out dyslexics or stretch an eight page paper
The secrets of the mind-body connection
For decades medical research has recognized the existence of the placebo effect — in which the assumption that a medication will help produces actual physical improvements. In addition to this, a
The sea as infinite laboratory
Much of our thinking on the shape of the world and the universe derives from the way scientists and artists have approached these topics over time. Our fascination with the mysteries of the
Sharing and collaborating - natural movements of the creative being
We might sometimes think that artistic or creative activity is, in essence, individualistic. The Genesis of Judeo-Christian tradition portrays a God whose decision to create the world is as vehement
John Malkovich becomes David Lynch (and other characters)
John Malkovich and David Lynch are, respectively, the actor and film director who’ve implicitly or explicitly addressed the issues of identity and its porous barriers through numerous projects. Now