Artist Highlight: Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka

Earlier this year, an interview between Studio Magazine and Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka was published in the Spring/Summer 2024 issue. Craft Ontario recently had an opportunity to visit Hatanaka's exhibition at The McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Final Gasp of the Nervous System, a project made while in residency in the historic Tom Thomson Shack.

Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka, a Japanese-Canadian, queer, and disabled artist based in Toronto, has a practice that is sculpted by identity. Hatanaka draws from her training in print and papermaking techniques, connecting to her intentional use of historical land-based materials and processes. Her adaptations of traditions, in the form of large-scale print installations and wearable sculptures, address contemporary questions of climate change, mental health, and survival. Recurring motifs related to landscape, fish, and bodies of water together speak about personal and collective experiences of struggle and resilience.

We were fortunate to connect with Hatanaka to further expand on the intentions and processes that went into these works, a linocut assemblage Faultlines and Loneliness (2024) and Aftershocks (2024), displayed at the centre; gyotaku (traditional Japanese fish prints) sewn together with linoprints of rolling landscapes, ink brush paintings, and traditional paper. Also on display is a lino block print matrix used by Hatanaka in the printmaking process. Find their words for further insights on these works below. 

The work can be viewed in the Tom Thomson Shack at The McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 10365 Islington Ave., Kleinburg, ON, on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from August through to October, 2024, from 12 to 3 pm, when the Thomson Shack will be open for visitors to experience the project at their leisure!

 The act of making my work in general is an act of resilience, as my health is unstable. In the sewn, patchworked piece titled “Aftershocks” you can see a mix of loose expressiveness, with finely controlled linocut carving and the exacting sewing attaching all the pieces. Meanwhile, I don’t plan these types of works, I begin and make decisions as I go. Conversely, the work “Faultlines and Loneliness” is part of a different series of works which are entirely planned in advance on graph paper. The way the individual handmade papers are attached at the back are at once very precise and varying but very intentionally leaving little gaps so that the beautiful handmade “deckle” edge of the papers are visible. My friend Tatsuyuki Kitaoka made these papers in Kochi, Japan from locally harvested kozo fibre – a resilient craftsperson to be sure!

All of life and the Earth we inhabit is inherently unstable, but we like to think it is not. I think the times we are in in terms of the climate and the recent global pandemic are forcing everyone to be confronted by instability. We can also look to the wisdom of neurodivergent and disabled folks like myself - conditions mostly regarded as problems - whose whole lives are learning to be adaptive, persisting against immense challenge, having alternate ways of being – resilient.

There are different pieces of linocut, naturally dyed and ink painted papers sewed into “Aftershocks”. I save cut-off scraps as I sew new works, and sew those into the next works – therefore my works are connected over time and also incorporate many layers of histories, in this case the different meanings and moments captured in each printing block or ink drawing, and of course histories of the materials themselves.

Almost all of the paper I used are from Kashiki Seishi, a family papermill of seven generations of papermakers. Some of the papers are 50 years old, papers they no longer produce. It’s an honour to get to work with the last pieces of that moment in time, created using the same techniques and actions passed down previously, and then passed down to the current makers. Some of these were dyed at that time, some I am dying the paper in present time. Their craftsmanship embodies resilience as well. It is difficult work to keep these traditions going. I am really keen to be part of a collective effort to share the virtues of such craft traditions and assert their wisdom particularly in the growing precarity of ecosystems and existence.

All craft traditions live within the capacity of the earth – there is no harm in the act of making paper and it can return back to the earth and water. This knowledge, as all intimate generational knowledge, has served humans for a long time and it is important to look to this in addition to looking to new technologies and ideas.