Using figures and cutouts from family photos and found photographs collaged on sheets of transparent film, Ayumi Tanaka creates otherworldly images conveying stories from personal memories.
Her three-dimensional dioramas are constructed in a box by overlapping multiple layers of photo collages, and are photographed using different lighting techniques and with black and white film. They are unlike anyone's practice we are seeing today. “At times in my day-to-day life, I find myself stumbling over reminders of days gone by. Partly formed of memory rise up from a forgotten abyss within, surrounding me like a powerful fragrance and rocking my emotions to the core. In these moments, I am seized with the desire to gather and collect, to retrieve what has been lost and weave it into something whole,” Tanaka writes accompanying this body of work. The Japanese born, New York-based artist was recently nominated for PDN’s 30 and was a recipient of this years New York Art Foundation Fellowship Program.
