ETSU EGAMI

As a traveller and anthropologist, Etsu Egami successfully connects the meanings and ideas—natureand culture—in her earlier works.

Born in Japan, studied in the United States and Europeand currently living in Chiba, Japan, the artist works inan environment with constant movement with momentsof rootedness, rupture and detachment, whichcontributes to the artist’s deep interest in language andthe experience of misunderstanding, which she believesis the foundation of any attempt at communication andsharing.She said we must learn to ‘listen with the eyes, and seewith the ears’—in other words, to perceive the visibleform as a flow, an undulating figure. Through therustling of tongue and sound, we should try graspingthe forms of thought.Thus, her pictorial practice is rooted in anatomy andmorphology as in the cultural aspects, which includedmyths, religions, philosophy, psychology and linguistics.

She transforms oil painting into a kind of fluid ink, which she uses in the manner of oriental calligraphers,alternating horizontal and sinuous stripes. Playing withlight, transparency and colour; her hasty and untiedtouch draws shapes. Depending on the point of view ordistance, sometimes the imagery switches to figuration,sometimes abstraction.

The human body and the body of the painting, thesubject and the manner; the content and the form areone. In other words, colour matters as much as shape.Painting, according to the artist, is an act of cognition: itis not simply a question of seeing, but a way of seeinghow we see.

By omitting details and unique characteristics, the artist makes it possible to identify such or such individual, itconcentrates on the fundamental form, the silhouetteand the archetype; hence her fascination with the figureof Venus.

Goddess of love and beauty, the name of Venus alsoserves as the first symbol of femininity and fertility. It isalso a canon of beauty.

The one who contemplates it, therefore, does not simplylook at a body but at the powers that have shaped it andradiate through it.Facing each painting, our gaze is invited to decipher alanguage, a code: the Venus code.