My practice addresses notions of loss, longing and identity, by drawing on personal experiences and my mixed Japanese and British heritage. I take inspiration, visually and materially, from the traditional and the contemporary; from Japanese and European still life paintings and religious iconography of the 16th-18th century, Eastern philosophy and Japanese aesthetic principles, or by adopting techniques of the Old Masters to create paintings from digitally rendered collages.
Almost as a metaphor of my mixed heritage and as such, the notion of existing in a place or a state that is neither one or the other, the work lies somewhere between; between abstraction and figuration, the real and the virtual, East and West, presence and absence, the past and the present. During the Fellowship I plan to research the methodologies and social histories of traditional crafts, in order to further understand the hybridisation and transmission of cultures. Moreover I plan to develop my understanding and technique in a range of decorative surface processes such as marbling, verre églomisé, gilding and Japanning.
Website: www.yukiaruga.co.uk
Instagram: @yuki.aruga