AISHA HARA
THE ARTIST
MULTI-DISCILIPINARY
Aisha Hara is a biracial Japanese-Australian artist working on the traditional lands of the Wurundjeri Willam people. She isi interested in looking at the hybridity of her two cultural backgrounds and a fragmentation of their hidden histories.
Working in oil paintings and ceramic sculpture, she is intrigued by a command of colour to inform a sense lyrical narrative. Hara enjoys working large scale and transforming compositions as she goes, intuitively prioritizing moments over total composition. By blending her family archives of Japanese poetry, Dutch objects reminiscent of migration and my own perspective, Hara wants to celebrate the desire to be represented and understood as an Australian. Similarly, she utilises painting methods blending between representation and abstraction to express a dream like state. She references everything from the Dutch renaissance Hieronymus Bosch, Japanese Ukiyo-e Hokusai to contemporary artist Taro Okamoto.
Hara states that she is always looking at identity as a fluid ever changing concept. She see the future of growth to be within understanding Australia’s colonial history and challenging stereotypes of Asia within Australia.
"Self-portrait holding the Tower of the Sun (2021)
Oil on Canvas
This portrait is a loaded image of personal symbols presenting the concept of living as a settler on the stolen lands of Aboriginal Australian people. The image, which stands at the artists height, explores the bi-racial ties to the artists’ background. Dutch antiques, Japanese icons and Australian place locates the work. The figure holds the Tower of the Sun a 1970 building in Osaka by Japanese artist Okamoto Taro. The tower features three faces one presenting the present, the top presenting the future, and another not seen on the back showing the past. In essence of this the painting is looking at representing identity of Asian Australians past present and future. A diasporic identity (having origins outside this host country) is a fluid and ever changing in between space. Only the potential for unlearning the stains of colonialism and listening are the elements for configuring this sense of belonging.
Growing Discomfort (2021)
Set of 3 Ceramic Vessels
Growing discomfort is an acknowledgement to our unawareness of how things may escalate. An ode to the unexpected outcomes of the hand building and glazing practice within ceramics and the metaphors of a mutation of growth spreading. The three pieces start as a paper cup then a round vase and finally a large vessel with an unavoidable decor of this plant like growth. Constructed from a slab cast of a paper cup and bowls joined together in a hand building process the vessels explore the many different attitudes and treatments that come with the ceramic process. Whilst wedging clay requires strength, hand building and the bisque products are so fragile and require sensibility. A meditative and physical process is something that I was intrigued by as a painter entering this new medium of ceramics. The work is a combination of this and that of both comfort and discomfort.
Oil on Canvas:
$1800
Ceramic (sold at COZY)
If you'd like to make a purchase, please contact Aisha at 0421174336