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MAYUMI HAMANAKA CV REQUEST INFO < back to images BIO Mayumi Hamanaka was born in Japan, where she studied Art History at the International Christian University in Tokyo. She went on to receive a B.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999 and an M.F.A. in photography from California College of the Arts in 2004. She was awarded a Murphy Fellowship Award in 2003 as well as a residency at the Taiwan Artist Village in Taipei in 2005. Outside of the Bay Area, she has shown in Chicago, New York, Albuquerque, Tucson, and Taiwan. Mayumi currently resides in Oakland, where she is a lecturer at California College of the Arts. STATEMENT I am interested in the interaction of the images that are found in our surroundings. Unconsciously or intentionally, images are used to construct public opinions and consequently they penetrate into our lives. With the re-assemblage of images from our present and past, and of the images personally taken and the historical images you find in books, I like to reconstruct sequences of images to examine the personal meanings in historical events. I hope my work inspires viewers to grasp some ephemeral essences of historical events that easily fade away in our everyday life but still remain with us in the air and in the duration of time. Galaxy currently consists of 4 pieces. They are fictional paper-cutout topographical maps. The maps are created from the photographs of groups of soldiers and people from WWI and WWII. I follow the outlines of human shapes in the photograph to create each layer in the map. Galaxy 1 is based on a photograph of war captives and Galaxy 2 is based on a photograph of people kneeling down to the emperor’s palace during the WWII in Japan. The shapes of human figures are identifiable but embedded and merged into in these fictional landscapes with millions of stars (pins). Streak of is a series of photographs I have been taking from my everyday life. The captured images are very airy and light. They don’t specify the subject matter or the context in which the images are taken, as if you are searching for something in the void. PRESS MAYUMI HAMANAKA, Gambit Weekly, July 2011. Review of "The Great White" by Eric D. Bookhardt. MAYUMI HAMANAKA, 96 hours, March 2011 Review of "Aboveground" by Mary Eisenhart. MAYUMI HAMANAKA, East Bay Express, January 2011. Review of "Double Dare at Swarm Gallery" by Cheng Dewitt.

MAYUMI HAMANAKA

BIO

Mayumi Hamanaka was born in Japan, where she studied Art History at the International Christian University in Tokyo. She went on to receive a B.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999 and an M.F.A. in photography from California College of the Arts in 2004.

She was awarded a Murphy Fellowship Award in 2003 as well as a residency at the Taiwan Artist Village in Taipei in 2005. Outside of the Bay Area, she has shown in Chicago, New York, Albuquerque, Tucson, and Taiwan. Mayumi currently resides in Oakland, where she is a lecturer at California College of the Arts.

STATEMENT

I am interested in the interaction of the images that are found in our surroundings. Unconsciously or intentionally, images are used to construct public opinions and consequently they penetrate into our lives. With the re-assemblage of images from our present and past, and of the images personally taken and the historical images you find in books, I like to reconstruct sequences of images to examine the personal meanings in historical events. I hope my work inspires viewers to grasp some ephemeral essences of historical events that easily fade away in our everyday life but still remain with us in the air and in the duration of time.

Galaxy currently consists of 4 pieces. They are fictional paper-cutout topographical maps. The maps are created from the photographs of groups of soldiers and people from WWI and WWII. I follow the outlines of human shapes in the photograph to create each layer in the map. Galaxy 1 is based on a photograph of war captives and Galaxy 2 is based on a photograph of people kneeling down to the emperor’s palace during the WWII in Japan. The shapes of human figures are identifiable but embedded and merged into in these fictional landscapes with millions of stars (pins).

Streak of is a series of photographs I have been taking from my everyday life. The captured images are very airy and light. They don’t specify the subject matter or the context in which the images are taken, as if you are searching for something in the void.

PRESS

MAYUMI HAMANAKA, Gambit Weekly, July 2011.
Review of "The Great White" by Eric D. Bookhardt.

MAYUMI HAMANAKA, 96 hours, March 2011
Review of "Aboveground" by Mary Eisenhart.

MAYUMI HAMANAKA, East Bay Express, January 2011.
Review of "Double Dare at Swarm Gallery" by Cheng Dewitt.