Lydia Okumura was born in 1948 to Japanese parents in São Paulo, Brazil. In the 1970s, influenced by the new art movements in Japan and North America, she initiated the first Conceptual Art show in Brazil with fellow students at the SESC Vila Nova in São Paulo. As part of the collective Equipe3, along with Genilson Soares and Francisco Iñarra, Okumura was invited to participate in the 1973 São Paulo Biennial, for which they created a site-specific abstract environment, Points of View. This formative early installation was a precursor to Okumura’s sustained investigation of the intersections between two- and three-dimensional space, creating precise geometric illusions through modest interventions.
Read MoreOkumura moved to New York in 1974, where she attended the Pratt Graphics Center and collaborated on Sol LeWitt’s Minimalist wall drawings, to which her own works have been compared. Okumura creates her ‘Situations’ by painting directly on walls, connecting geometric shapes with pieces of string and drawn graphite lines that result in deceptively simple optical illusions. As the artist explains, “I longed to combine the idea of dimensions – from three-dimensional to flat surfaces – to multi-dimensions perceptible by the mind”.
Okumura participated in five São Paulo Biennials between 1973-84, as well as numerous gallery and institutional exhibitions across the US and Latin America, including a solo show at the Museu de Arte Moderna, São Paulo in 1984. Okumura received her first touring US retrospective in 2016, which started at UB Art Galleries, Buffalo, NY before travelling to the Weber State University in Utah, and the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Arizona.
Okumura’s works are included in the permanent collections of major institutions, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museo de Arte Moderna, Brazil; Museum of Belas Artes, Venezuela; Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan; Akron Art Museum, Ohio and University of Buffalo Museum, NY.
