Artist Masami Teraoka documents abuse of power and resistance

Art makes bold, beautiful or engaging statements about our social and aesthetic world. Yet the piece of work itself is only the tip of a rich and voluminous ether of ideas that inspired it. The piece only hints at the materials and process used, the labor of love and agony that kept the creator glued to his canvas for untold months.

Take for instance, a 2017 Pussy Riot-themed painting by Masami Teraoka, “Viktoria Naraxsa,” the centerpiece at the “State of Art: New Work” exhibition at Hawaii State Art Museum.

A globally recognized artist, Teraoka is known for continuing to perfect the details of his work, even as it’s being mounted on the exhibit wall. Scratch his background and you’ll find a host of intriguing dualities. He traverses the conventional and the current, East and West, the muted and vibrant and brings the hidden to the forefront, turning the established concept of the sacred and profane on its head.

The Pussy Riot painting currently on display is part of a series that has inspired Teraoka’s brush since 2012 when the female punk rock group flouted the face of religious and political orthodoxy by staging a protest-performance inside a Moscow cathedral. They were subsequently imprisoned, and again burst onto media radar when officers gave two of the band members an impromptu public lashing. This startling scene is recreated in “Viktoria Naraxsa,” a painting that took shape in response to a meeting between the artist and two of the band members.

“The more I painted and got to know Pussy Riot’s vision, I liked that they were going for humanity, individual liberty and free expression,” noted the Waimanalo artist. “I said we are on the same boat, I’ve got to meet them.”

Teraoka managed to strike up contact via social media with Viktoria Naraxsa, a Pussy Riot choreographer and performance artist. Their online exchanges struck Teraoka as a tad uncivil as he sought to invite her to Hawaii to work on a collaboration. It wasn’t until Teraoka actually spoke with Naraxsa over the phone that he realized she didn’t speak a word of English. She’d been using a translator app to converse with him, hence the sometimes-awkward correspondence.

In the painting at HiSAM, Naraxsa is draped in a kimono and clasping a cellphone. The Japan-born Teraoka, whose family once owned a kimono shop, was halfway finished with the painting when Naraxsa came to Hawaii in early 2017. Teraoka was surprised to discover his artistic vision was spot on: Naraxsa had a fondness for kimonos, as her dance mentor had a background in Japanese arts including butoh.

“I hope to document who these women are as much as possible,” said Teraoka of Pussy Riot, adding that he tends to devote himself to a subject for years, uncovering each new facet that presents itself. At the moment, he’s been attentively tuned to a Trump-Russia connection.

FOR 50 years now, Teraoka has used his talents to comment on social and political issues. His artistic origins are in Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock, a classical form that he has used to address contemporary subjects like AIDS, culture clash and fast food. As world events transpired, his style and gaze began to transform. He found himself using his paintbrush to tackle injustice and hypocrisy, from the Monica Lewinsky inquisition to clergy abuse.

With his focus on clergy abuse, Teraoka turned to triptychs, replicating the renaissance style of devotional art, where two side panels open onto a reverent central image, be it of Mother Mary or saintly priests. Only, in Teraoka’s depictions, the males are not pious and the women not virginal. His scenes are twisted and gruesome, often dominated by nudity, ropes, wounds and bestial creatures. The orgy of bodies and transgressive tropes in this series of triptychs compels you to look, however squeamishly.

The painting at HiSAM is also a triptych. Teraoka’s church oeuvre segued readily into the Pussy Riot narrative, but he said his color palette adapted a bit less readily.

“While I was working on clergy sex abuse, my paint was pretty subdued because the theme is dark,” said Teraoka. “But when I started working on the Pussy Riot theme, I had to change gears because they are always in bright colors. I was in a totally unfamiliar territory of color.”

That constant evolution of artistic style and keen focus on current events keeps Teraoka’s work ever fresh and at the forefront of the art world’s attention. While Putin might not have plans to invite him to Moscow anytime soon, the country hosting the holy Vatican has not shied away. Teraoka is scheduled for a book signing in San Francisco later this year, and an exhibit at the ABC-Arte gallery in Genoa, Italy, next year.

GALLERY SHOP X MORI SHOWCASES TERAOKA, HESS AND UYEHARA

With an exhibit opening Friday, Masami Teraoka, Lynda Hess and Lori Uyehara will be featured in an installation at the Gallery Shop x Mori. Works by these artists are also on display in Hawaii State Art Museum galleries.

Teraoka is displaying some of his miniature oval pieces and at least one piece from his Pussy Riot-inspired series of paintings on wood. Known for using his easel as a platform for bold social critique, Teraoka’s oval works focus on Catholic Church clergy sex abuse; his Pussy Riot series are rendered primarily in triptych and framed in ostentatious gold.

“Pussy Riot had their (protest) performance at the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow under glittering gold leaf gothic architecture,” says Teraoka. “My Gothic gold leaf frames imply a sickeningly rich church and symbolize an authoritative suppresser’s environment and rule.”

He calls the series “Kubie.” The portraiture within the series touches on classic Japanese ukiyo-e print conventions, once used to depict kabuki actors. Titling the series “Kubie” keeps with the Japanese background theme.

“Kubie in Japanese means a bust portraiture, but I imply a more profound meaning,” notes Teraoka.

Where the English idiom “stick your neck out” engenders risking one’s safety for a cause, the Japanese equivalent is to “push your neck in.” Teraoka says his Kubie series is a nuanced tribute, beyond plain bust portraiture, to the punk rock group’s defiance against the government in pursuit of freedom of expression and individual liberty.

LYNDA HESS, who has used her talents to bring women’s issues to public attention for the past 30 years, began examining body issues after a bout with breast cancer some years ago. She recently moved from mainly two-dimensional to 3D representations, using mixed media.

In addition to a mini-retrospective of her paintings, her installation “Wall Flowers: Navigating the Gap” will be on view. The project addresses violence against women through the motif of ceramic flowers. She tackles the masculine genesis myth by fashioning women out of clay (recall that Adam was fashioned from clay, and woman from his rib).

“(The work) deals with what the prevalence and experience of violence against women means for all women,” says Hess. “Whether or not we’ve experienced physical violence, we have undoubtedly adapted to this environment.”

LORI UYEHARA’S fiber, acrylic, ceramic and wood pieces can be seen in group and juried exhibitions throughout the year. Her work is in the Honolulu Museum of Art collection as well as in private collections around the world.

“These works draw upon the diversity of the natural world and our collective relationship to it as its primary source of inspiration,” says Uyehara. “They are intended to serve as a vehicle for dialog with which viewers can explore these complex systems — investigating the collective and personal, the enduring and ephemeral.”

— Rasa Fournier, Special to the Star-Advertiser