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When Sayako Hiroi moved to Boston from Tokyo in 2022, strangers made assumptions about her based on her race and gender. She felt boxed in.
“I’m sick of thinking of myself as a Japanese female. Sometimes I want to get out of that image,” she said, allowing that Japanese people often pigeonhole Westerners, too. In her abstract paintings, she employs color, gestures, and composition to express her subjective experience as a person within a matrix of stereotypes.
Hiroi will receive her Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University this month. Her paintings are on view at Tufts University Art Galleries.
Where to find her: www.instagram.com/shanarine.3850
Age: 29
Making a living: Hiroi, a full-time student, works as a teaching assistant.
Originally from: Tokyo
Lives in: Boston
Studio: The SMFA/Tufts studios are open spaces with curtains for doors in a Mission Hill building that was originally a taxi garage. Last year, Hiroi’s studio was half the size of the one she’s in now. “Definitely it’s encouraging me to paint bigger scale,” she said.
Why paint: “It can tell everything. Speed, rhythm, contrast. Anger, sorrow.”
How she started: In Tokyo, Hiroi worked in sales and marketing for a manufacturing company.
“I found myself sick of pursuing only numbers in a capitalist society,” she said. “Also, I thought if I would not chase my dream — the big dream, becoming an artist — I would regret it.”
During the pandemic, she said, “I had a lot of time to think. I quit my job. I applied for some schools in the United States. And I’m here right now.”
What she makes: The artist’s color-rich, gestural abstract paintings “try to create a new image based on my life,” she said. “Not category, not nationality, not status.”
How she works: Hiroi begins with source images: Japanese woodblock prints; her own drawings or photographs. She memorizes them. Then she turns on music and funnels the memory through her imagination to convey her personal experience on canvas.
“This year I found I’m so excited to use my body with big gestures. This is like figure painting even though it does not look like a figure in the painting, because it reflects my body language,” she said.
She crafted handmade paper combining traditionally Japanese and American materials. In an April performance piece, she laid it on the floor and drew on it — visual art made with improvisational dance.
Advice for artists: “Last year I was struggling with my painting style. Even though people gave me compliments, I could not love my artwork. So I tried not to tell a lie to myself. Now, finally, I am about to find my own language,” Hiroi said. “Be patient. Trust yourself. Don’t tell a lie.”
MFA THESIS EXHIBITION: PULLING TEETH AND JUMPING ROPE
At Tufts University Art Galleries, 40 Talbot Ave., Medford, through May 19. https://smfa.tufts.edu/calendar/mfa-thesis-exhibition-pulling-teeth-and-jumping-rope
Cate McQuaid can be reached at catemcquaid@gmail.com. Follow her on Instagram @cate.mcquaid.
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