About Aya Nambu

My practice of sculpture, drawing, and animation centres around explorations into Being and various existential questions arising from the experience of ‘being’. My work is a result, or progression, of pursuing such investigations experientially rather than conceptually. The questions, sensations and concerns that arise from my daily experience of ‘being’ form the foundation for the investigations which are transformed into sculptural form.

I, as an artist, am provided with a constant source of matters and questions to explore simply by having the direct experience of my own being. I use my own being as a representation for a much broader concept of ‘being’, since, it seems, my experience of being is the only means by which I can ever know the world and everything of the world, including myself. This universal condition that we all share as human beings is the basis upon which I use my own being as a metaphor for that of each individual and I trust that my work finds its own language that can communicate with the audience.

My focus as an artist is on an ‘aesthetics’ of the such enquiries the intention is not to find answers or to make conceptual definitions. The necessary basis of making such enquiries is solely to enquire, since the enquiries are made for the indefinable. I find a certain beauty in the reality and simplicity of this challenge.

Most of my work convey a visual and conceptual form of the body in various ways. It is natural for me to work with the form of the body as the body for us is the only ʻplaceʼ in the world where we can experience ourselves and perceive the world around us, and from which all the existential questions of man emerge.

However, though the body provides the physical, and mental, ʻplaceʼ for us (ʻselfʼ) to be, it does not identify the ʻselfʼ which occupies the space within the body. There is a distance and relationship between our own body and our ʻselfʼ, as well as between us and others and the world around us. I am interested in this space that exists between the body and the ʻselfʼ, and how this space operates in relation to perception. The form of the body in my work is regarded as a vessel that can contain this ʻspaceʼ, by which a space can become embodied.