YOSHITOMO NARA (B. 1959)

Missing Mariana Suni Christina offers three central portraits of Yoshitomo Nara’s most beloved subject. Uncommon to his other paperworks, the girls’ entrancing eyes glisten with a level of tonally-rich detail. Intricate texture and delicate brushstrokes add to tenderness of the image — resulting in exquisite portraits that are akin to his canvas paintings.

Paper is perhaps the most intimate medium for the artist. It was expensive and scarce for Nara who grew up in postwar milieu, so his early artistic creation relied on reusing the materials. The medium became an indispensable fuel for his creativity, precious and deeply personal, enabling Nara to channel his childhood experiences into his art.

The artist leaves his work for multiple interpretations and these paintings exemplify the alluring ambiguity that Nara presents to viewers. This set offers a refreshing narrative to his ainfancy to Christina’s adolescence. “Missing” can mean lost or nostalgia which allows audiences to infer the work from two angles. While some would construe the piece as a poster for the missing girls, the ambiguity leaves a perhaps less somber interpretation that plays on the double entendre in “missing”. The girls are recollection, snapshots, of the wonderment, sincerity and excitement from different stages of childhood. Nara evokes nostalgic memories and childlike sense of life that we as adults had neglected but were nevertheless preserved in the recesses of our minds. Missing Mariana Suni Christina encourages us to reflect on the times when we were eager to grow up and asks have we mistaken the childish for the childlike?