Oiwa’s art spans multiple forms, integrating social and environmental concerns

Transmission 123: Interview with Oscar Oiwa

Oscar Oiwa is a visual artist who captivates audiences with both breathtaking and unsettling depictions of the natural and artificial worlds on the verge of collapse. Viewers are presented with a world that is simultaneously familiar and utterly strange—one made up of conflicting or incompatible components that coexist despite their extreme differences. He graduated with a B.F.A. in 1989 from São Paulo University’s School of Architecture and Urbanism. During his time as a student, he became an assistant at the São Paulo Art Biennial. Beginning his career in his hometown, he moved to Tokyo in 1991 after graduating. Since then, he has been involved in art globally. He spent a year in London in 1995, and after ten years in Japan, relocated to New York City.

Oscar Oiwa’s body of work spans traditional oil paintings, texts, and art objects to interactive immersive art, experimental virtual reality projects, fictional narrative-based installations, public art, and book production. His paintings of roiling oceans, cityscapes under siege from man-made or natural forces, or environments concealing mystical creatures are so vibrant and detailed that they verge on surrealism. Viewers are drawn into the depth of the issues Oiwa addresses. His thorough research and sketching process help him visualize his interest in social issues. With an expansive vision, he integrates countless elements in his artwork, giving viewers a simultaneous inside-out look at our world.

Throughout his career, he has received numerous honors, including grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Gottlieb Foundation Individual Support Grant in 2021, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2001, and a grant from the Asian Cultural Council in 2002. In 2019, His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor of Japan, awarded him the Medal of Honor. Oiwa’s artwork has been displayed in public collections around the world, including the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo; the Mori Art Museum (Tokyo); the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art; the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa; Arizona State University Art Museum; the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation; and the University of São Paulo Museum of Contemporary Art (USP).

Featured image: Ogijima Pavillion ,2022, a collaboration work with architect
Shigeru Ban for Setouchi Triennale, Ogi Island, Kagawa, Japan ©Oscar Oiwa Studio, NY
Oscar Oiwa‘s official site, Instagram, Youtube

How did they influence your style and approach? Who were the early influences that shaped your artistic path? Can you share some of your best childhood memories related to art?

When I was 9 or 10 years old, my father bought a piece of land and built our family house. Since I had access to the building plans at home and could watch the construction process every week, I became interested in architecture. This experience made me more drawn to architecture than art school, and I eventually enrolled in the architecture department at the University of São Paulo. What I learned in architecture is still useful to me today. I now apply structural calculations and logical thinking, based on engineering principles, to planning my art.

I have been drawing since I was a child, and when I was 13 years old, I won a prize in a newspaper-sponsored competition. That gave me the opportunity to study at a local art school for a year. However, I didn’t make any friends there because I was only 13 years old, while my classmates were 17 or 18 years old. Additionally, I didn’t enjoy the way the tasks were assigned by the teacher. Studying at this art school was a traumatic experience for me.

He expresses his concerns about humanity’s increasing interference with nature through expansive oil paintings on canvas. With his trademark sense of humor, the final image—often grandiose and sometimes apocalyptic—portrays life and society

Have you faced any significant creative challenges or obstacles at the beginning of your career? How did you overcome them? What do you enjoy most about your work, and what are the greatest satisfactions?

While I was in college, I began assisting artists from abroad at the São Paulo Biennale, which sparked my interest in working in the art world. During that time, I came into contact with many internationally famous contemporary artists, such as Anselm Kiefer, Keith Haring, David Hockney, Frank Stella, John Cage, among others. I worked at several São Paulo Biennales as an assistant. Helping these artists was the best art education I could have received. The artists seemed so cool, and I started dreaming of becoming an international artist one day.

The biggest challenge was that I grew up in a family that wasn’t wealthy, so I never had the opportunity to travel abroad, and at that time, I didn’t speak English. However, my life began to change after I enrolled at the University of São Paulo. I got accepted into a study abroad program in Japan, where I visited for the first time and stayed for 10 months. That experience was transformative, and I returned to Japan in 1991, during the end of Japan’s bubble economy, where I secured a job as a designer at an architectural firm.

You later moved to New York and are still based in the U.S. Why did you move to New York?

I was living in Tokyo, and when I was 30 years old, I went to London for a year to study oil painting with the support of the Delfina Studio Foundation, in order to deepen my understanding of painting. Later, in 2002, I received scholarships from the ACC-Asian Cultural Council and the Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. However, I was hesitant to go to New York because it was shortly after 9/11, and I was married with two children. After careful consideration, I decided to go. I arrived in New York in June 2002 and was surprised to see that everyone in the city was going about their daily lives as usual, without any noticeable changes.

You were based in São Paulo, Tokyo, and New York, can you talk about what you felt was unique and different about each city?

In all three cities, I have my cell phone, friends, and visa to stay. The Japanese national character is very detail-oriented, so while I receive many commissions for small, detailed pieces, it’s challenging to work on larger projects. The advantage of being in Japan is the easy connection to other parts of Asia, making it convenient to collaborate with Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, etc., and the food is fantastic.

New York is great for having a studio. There are many galleries, and people and information naturally gather without the need to move around much. However, the downside is that the cost of living is extremely high, so I always have to work hard to keep up with expenses.

São Paulo is my birthplace, but it’s laid back, and projects often take a long time to progress, sometimes halting midway. It’s also difficult to expand from Brazil to the rest of Latin America. If I had stayed in São Paulo, I might not have been able to work internationally as I do now.

In your installations, there is a strong sense of transforming ordinary spaces into surreal dreamscapes. How do you approach spatial design to evoke these reactions? You have created large-scale immersive art projects. What originally inspired you to work on such a monumental scale?

We only have one body, and through our five senses, we perceive the environment around us. The world is full of stimuli, and we try to store this vast amount of data in our memory and organize it. The central idea of my installations is to explore what happens when these logical rules are broken.

To create large installations, I don’t work alone; I work within a specific context. To develop something meaningful, I need to understand the local cultural background and the goals of my audience. An example of how complex it is to execute a new large project: In 2019, I was invited to create a large, permanent piece in a riverside park in Shanghai. It was a public project sponsored by the local government. The first step was to understand the context, so my first trip to Shanghai was purely for research.

A viewpoint from above is often present, as Oscar Oiwa frequently illustrates his concepts in large paintings using a bird’s-eye view or drawing technique, drawing on his background in architecture to emphasize the overlooked.

Having grown up in Brazil, our world history education begins with Mesopotamia, moves to Egypt, Rome, and Greece, then shifts to Europe, and finally to the Americas. I had little knowledge of what happened in Asia, so I spent considerable time studying Chinese history, particularly the history of Shanghai. Once I had a better understanding, I began to think about an idea for the riverside park. My concept was to create a ship moving toward the future. The shape of the ship was inspired by 19th-century merchant vessels, but the materials I used were modern, like glass from skyscrapers. I chose a ship because it holds nostalgic significance for my family’s journey. My parents immigrated from Japan to Brazil in the 1950s by ship, a journey that took 40 days. Another recent work involving a ship was an installation in Keelung, a small town in northern Taiwan.

You have created many artworks using black and white in your ink drawings and immersive installations. What is it about these monochromatic, intricate textures that appeals to you, and how does it enhance the viewer’s experience?

Recently, I’ve completed several large installations, including a dome entirely covered with a continuous drawing. Technically, it’s very simple—it’s just a large hand-drawn piece using marker pens. However, the story behind the development of this kind of installation is quite long. Since I was a child, I have loved drawing comics and started developing my own style using traditional ink pens or Rotring pens.

When I began my artistic career, I created black-and-white drawings on walls. In several exhibitions, I expanded this to include drawings on the floor. Later, I combined both the floor and the walls. That led to a new idea: why not use a dome and create a 360-degree drawing? An immersive, large-scale drawing that people could enter. This installation concept was highly successful and has been exhibited in various versions in New York, Los Angeles, Brussels, Pingtung (Taiwan), Shodojima (Japan), and São Paulo.

Your paintings are also characterized by pieces with bold, deep, and vibrant colors. How do you choose your color palette? When do you feel that colors are necessary? What is your personal relationship with colors? Do they reflect the way you see the world?

On one side, I have my large black-and-white drawings. In contrast, on the other side, I have my very colorful paintings. I enjoy exploring the possibilities of each medium. I use color to highlight the characteristics of oil paint. Growing up in Brazil, where the sunlight is strong, we naturally experience a strong contrast between light and shadow. The flowers, fruits, fish, and insects all have vibrant colors, and the forests and sky are always green and blue. I believe my sense of color and contrast naturally comes from this background.

Many of your artworks blur the line between imagination and reality. How do you find a balance between representing real-world themes and creating otherworldly experiences? You evoke a dreamlike atmosphere. How do you incorporate surrealist elements and symbolism into your work? What do these elements represent to you? How do you translate your dreams or subconscious thoughts into visual form?

A good example of how a painting is created in my mind is my series entitled ‘Hotel Office’. Due to exhibitions, I travel a lot and am usually very busy during the day. When I return to the hotel at night, I have to open my laptop and work for another hour to catch up on various tasks and confirm the appointments for the next day. In my tired mind, the events of the day begin to swirl together, mixing everything up, and that’s how this series was born.

You explore existential questions, and your artworks feature strong environmental themes, encompassing topics like war and immigration. How do you see art’s role in responding to issues like climate change, and how do you personally address these themes in your projects?

My work encompasses a wide variety of techniques and themes. Some of it comes from very personal events, but much of my work explores broader social themes, such as the environment, wars, or political crises. A recent example is my series based on the Covid crisis, which has affected the entire world. People from different parts of the world have had varied experiences. With a global population of 8 billion, each person’s experience of the pandemic was unique. This idea inspired my work titled ‘Big Wave.’ The image depicts a large wave engulfing the city of New York, where I live. The wave symbolizes the waves of Covid that swept across the world in mid-2020.

From paintings to immersive installations, you work in diverse mediums. As a multidisciplinary artist, what challenges and opportunities do these different formats offer you? Which medium best represents your personality?

Despite not having had formal technical training in art school, I have always found it easy to master different techniques, whether it’s engraving, sculpture, oil or acrylic painting, digital media, or public art. During my travels, I make an effort to visit museums or meet with art-related individuals to learn something new. Recently, I’ve been working on a commission for a large mosaic wall in a New York subway station. I had never worked with mosaic before, so I started studying and learning about it. At the Metropolitan Museum in New York, I explored works from the Roman Empire. Venice also has beautiful mosaic works on building facades. Interestingly, Mexico has excellent mosaic fabricators, due to its strong tradition of large social murals.

Are any of your artworks related to a moment that marked a significant point in your life? Could you share the story behind it?

I have many works that serve as landmarks in my life. All the works featured in this interview are special to me in some way. One example of a piece that uses a specific social theme as a motif is ‘Gardening (Manhattan)’, which is part of the collection at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. This work has been featured in many academic textbooks. It was an attempt to depict the impression of 9/11 in New York City. The piece has two aspects: on one hand, it appears to be a view of Manhattan covered with greenery and flowers, but on the other hand, it can also be interpreted as resembling an explosion.

Photos courtesy of Oscar Aiwa

Dominique Musorrafiti

Ciao! My name is Dominique. I’m Italian and I’m proud to be a mix. My father was an Italian chemical engineer and high school teacher, with Greek and Polish heritage. My mother is Haitian, she was high school language teacher, with Dominican, Spanish, French, Portuguese, African and Native American heritage. Being a mix makes me appreciate to want to understand different cultures and lifestyles. I grew up in Italy, lived few years in Haiti, travel around main European capitals, lived many years in China, in Spain and UK. Traveling makes me feel that we can learn something from every situation in every part of the world.