It's with heavy hearts that we continue our A Portfolio series with the loss of the great painter, Yayoi Asoma. Her work was a refreshing representation of memory, of home, of the things we collect and collect around ourselves. We remember seeing her work in the heart of the pandemic and seeing a unique domestic settings that were both fantastical, ideal and dense, somehow solitary and yet so alive. As friend and fellow painter Jesse Mockrin wrote on Instagram this week of Asoma, "She altered the rules of perspective to mirror the mental and emotional maps our attachments to places create in us." That is so true.
Asoma said of her paintings, "My work speaks through the familiarity of the home, where spaces of our everyday lives entwine with the memories and associations of our experiences. While a house is often referred to as a home, the concept of "home" is broader than a physical dwelling. Home is often a place of refuge and safety. Home is an experience as much as a specific place. Through my work, I am reflecting on the ways in which we construct our ideas of selfhood and origin through the spaces that we occupy—especially from our childhood home. On the most basic level, I see my process of painting as a type of remembrance, a memorial to the spaces that I once occupied and a preservation of the memories imparted in them."
We send our best wishes to Yayoi's family and friends.
