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| Artist Statement | Home |
| My name is Eri Imamura. I am a fiber artist combining my cultural
concepts with Native American beading technique. I am from Japan. I grew
up in a big city, Tokyo, Japan. Tokyo is well westernized and full of western
technologies. When I was studying at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts
and Music, I found that we are forgetting our cultural identities, surrounded
by westernized society, and questioning the westernized, materialistic society.
Since then I have been seeking the way to get back our own cultural values
in the society. To do so, I decided to come to New Mexico, to learn from
Native American culture and art. This experience teaches me how strongly
I connect to my background culture. The Japanese culture is my identity
and who I am. The more I study Native American culture and art, the more
I realize that I am Japanese. At the same time, I discover commonalities
of essential cultural beliefs between Native Americans and Japanese such
as worship for nature and animism.
I am very interested in the combination of my cultural concept and Native American cultural technique. This combination represents my current presence and how I am identifying with my own culture with a perspective of the Native American culture. After studies and experiences of Native American culture, I rediscover the importance and the beauty of my own culture in Japan. By reconstructing my cultural concepts through Native beadwork, I try to bring out a new aspect of the Japanese beauty. By combining both Japanese and Native American culture, I would like
to offer opportunities of cross-cultural conversations to the public.
There are numberless cultural peoples who share some communality of spirituality
and humanity. I am hoping that by discovering the communal spirituality
in multiple cultures we could celebrate our similarities as well as differences
cross-culturally. Also, I hope that the cross-cultural conversations lead
to deeper understanding and peace between different cultures around the
world. |
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Eri  Imamura
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