Yuki Nakamura

[Archive] There is No Answer, 2022 (ART BEASTIES Cornish Arts Incubator Residency 2020) Vachon clay, cloth, camera Size: 1.5 x 1.5 x 1.5m Photo: Tokio Kuniyoshi Still image from video footage: edited by Maho Hikino There is No Answer is a viewer participation performance work from my recent residency in Seattle. The unrestricted "question" given by others is used as a vehicle confronting oneself and I explore and create forms my own roots as a Japanese artist in the context of world linguistically, historically, and religiously (including views of life and death), culturally and ethnically. There Is No answer is mainly made up of three parts. The first part is to seek an invisible answer as a confrontation with the self. I started by asking friends with personal connections with a question. The second part is to create several 90cm circular rug assuming the size that one person can sit alone as a spatial boundary. The third part is sitting on top of rug, coiled-pinching balls while contemplating the answers to the “questions” given by others as a means of confronting the self and contemplate my roots. ART BEASTIES Founded in New York in 2013, ART BEASTIES is an international Japanese artists’ collective active in New York, Seattle, London, and Tokyo. The group has maintained a strong programme of national and international group exhibitions. Members regularly connect online to share ideas, support one another’s practice, and explore alternative ways to develop and present contemporary Japanese art and perspectives.

[Archive] Drift Bottles, 2016 Porcelain bottles, sand 11 x 76 x 132 in Time Difference: Vol.2 New York-Seattle-Tokyo-Kobe June 1 – June 5, 2016 Photo: Tokio Kuniyoshi Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, Kobe Japan My installation entitled “Drift Bottles,“ explores "memory, time, distance and connection" as a part of Art Beasties’ “Time Difference: New York-Seattle-Tokyo-Kobe” exhibition at Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art in Kobe, Japan in 2016. My work consists of a hundred-cast porcelain objects and sand. In collaboration with Fumi Takahashi, contemporary dancer performed an impromptu interactive performance with the installation. Hailing from a town in rural Shikoku, Japan, my youth was delineated by the seashore of my small island. As my father drove the northeast side of the coastline of Shikoku Island from Takamatsu City to Naruto City as a track driver, I often sat in front passenger seat. When we stopped by the beaches, I looked for a message in a bottle, especially from foreign countries. I also made my bottle and released it into the sea although the bottle kept coming back to the shore by wave. I threw it again and again as far as I could. Sea is omnipresent in my daily imagery as I watch the floating forms of ships, tankers, and drifting objects. I was intrigued by floating debris in the ocean from 2011 Tsunami in Japan, which took over 20,000 people’s life. It washed everything away. I think of the sea between the Pacific Northwest and Japan. They float in the ocean like patchy islands. Some of them were actually arrived to the west coast, including of house, boats, ships, motorcycle, furniture, soccer balls, shoes, plastic containers, etc. This debris is a part of someone’s life. Each object has a story or belongs to someone. They speak to us not just as an inanimate object, but to the human spirit, to the tenacity of people.

Clay Flakes in Water (24 Hours), 2026 Porcelain, water Dried porcelain flakes were gently released into water and left to settle over 24 hours. As the clay dissolved, the water became cloudy; when the sediment came to rest, a surface resembling the seabed gradually emerged.

[Archive] Fictional City, 2005 Artist in residency at Novara Arte Cultura, Novara, Italy Plaster 8.5(h) x 76(w) x 67(d) in During a residency in the northern Italian town of Novara, I was inspired by the city map of historic Novara, especially its general form, which I rendered by casting individual building blocks in plaster. The project evolved through historic dialogue with local residents and working with dozens of high school students. The installation connected people, place and history.

[Archive] Brightness, 2010 Porcelain, projector, DVD player, DVD 96(h) x 96(w) x 10(d) in Photo: Richard Nicol Brightness is a multimedia installation created for the Bellevue Arts Museum Biennial: Clay Throwdown (2010). Hundreds of cast porcelain light bulbs merge with video art, transforming into light structures. Through a 3-minute loop of projected animations, image becomes sculpture and sculpture becomes image, revealing the dynamic interplay of motion, form, and light. By combining ceramics and digital media — two very different but powerful disciplines — I explore tactile effects, the delicate contrast between porcelain skin and digital imagery, and the tension between the human world and our fragile earth. Each porcelain bulb began as a collected carbon filament light bulb, cast in plaster and then porcelain, fired twice without glaze. They are no longer bulbs, but vessels of light and imagination.

[Archive] Connections, 2015 Participatory Collaboration and Site-Specific Installation University Place, USA Used soccer balls, spray-paint 5 x 5 x 5 ft. This site-specific installation was part of a global youth summit, bringing together students from Poland, Germany, China, Colombia, and the US to explore diverse perspectives. Working together with the students, we collected footballs from various communities, each carrying its own story. The balls were piled like a pyramid, emerging almost out of nowhere, creating an unexpected encounter that invited curiosity and connection. Layer by layer, the installation became a shared narrative of movement, play, and collective memory, a dialogue between people, place, and materials.

[Archive] Floating Plaster / City Motion, 2006, 2011 Collaboration with Robert Campbell Hydrocal plaster, DLP projectors, DVD players, synchronizer, speakers, DVDs Installation 9(h) x 30 (w) x 40(d) ft Sculpture 1(h) x 14(w) x 4(d) ft 9 min 31 sec Floating Plaster/City Motion is a new multimedia installation by Robert Campbell and Yuki Nakamura, who worked together for the first time in the New Works Laboratory residency program. Having fixed on a basic formal approach, we developed a series of elements that were striking on their own but would respond to projected light. The moving sequence, which runs approximately nine minutes, evokes the drama of a city: shifting lights, moving traffic, incidents of weather and other elements in flux that capture the pulse of a place. The two artists contributed equally to the refinement and resolution of each part, working together to make a new whole. Incorporating three synchronized video projectors, which become one moving image, image becomes sculpture, and sculpture image through the dynamic interplay between image, motion, sound and form. The work integrates sculptural formal aesthetics with architectonic video projections of animated imagery toward the creation of an evocative and dynamic installation.

[Archive] Dream, 2005–2009 Porcelain, electroluminescent wire, ac driver, wood 88(h) x 156(w) x 108(d) in Dream is a deeply personal work that acknowledges the premature death of my brother at the age of 36. I was inspired by my brother’s passion for engagement and teaching to young children as a football coach in Shikoku Island, Japan. Many boys and girls from my hometown dream of becoming a professional football player. Hanging suspended in time and space are fragile porcelain football, all of which are at different stages of deflation. Each ball represents the dream of my brother as well as that of those young children from Shikoku. Between 2005–2009, this work was exhibited across the US in venues such as the Peeler Art Center (DePauw University, Greencastle, IN), Tacoma Art Museum (Tacoma, WA), Black and White Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), All Nations Cup (Starfire Sports Complex, Tukwila, WA) and Dan & Gail Cannon Gallery (Western Oregon University, Monmouth, OR).

[Archive] Treemap, 2004 (artist in residency) Platano tree, wallpaper During my residency in La Napoule, France, I noticed the infinite pattern on the old Platano tree in the courtyard. I metaphorically treated the tree as a microcosm of the world, with its fractured bark outlines acting as islands. Together, the outlines of these bark islands, defining the shape and structure of the tree, evoked map-like boundaries. The performative installation unfolds as a silent dialogue between the tree and the viewers.

[Archive] Red Stair (2003), Velvet, foam, wood, roller Red Stair (2003) was born out of daily studio practice, during a period when I was exploring architectural geometric forms and modules in clay. Using clay as a thinking and play tool, I transformed one piece into a wearable sculpture, investigating the parallels between body, form, movement, and photography, and bringing it into the realm of runway performance. FASHION is ART (2003) is a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional project featuring nineteen specially commissioned artist works, ranging from outrageous to transcendent, organized by Thread for Art. Curated by Rhonda Howard, artist Yuki Nakamura, and graphic designer Rebecca Richards, the project encourages artists to engage in an ongoing dialogue about fashion—from gender bending to the socio-political role of clothing in the global economy. Challenged to fill in the blank in “Fashion is __________,” emerging and established artists responded with self-inflating pants, edible deep-fried underwear-shaped desserts, an all-girl, all-Asian punk band in matching outfits, a make-up firing cannon, and other clever explorations of the intersections between fashion, art, and performance. (Excerpt from the catalogue: Fashion is Art, 2003, THREAD for ART, Seattle, WA)

[Archive] White Vanishing (2000), Porcelain, wood, latex paint: I explore casting multiple elements of a simple form, expressed through added dimensions of repetition, order, chaos, and structure. These individual pieces begin disorganized and featureless, but as they form strong attachments to each other and to the environment, they spontaneously take shape to produce ephemeral formations that settle into definite structures.

Everyday Making (2023-2024) London, UK, Clay (From “Clay in Conversation” talk: I moved to London in 2017. Moving to a new country felt like starting over. With limited time and space, my practice became more fragmented. I had limited time and space, so I embraced what I call everyday making — small, daily experiments with clay. This practice encouraged me to take risks, play, and experiment, making the act of creating itself the main focus rather outcome.)