For the 2025 edition of ArtRio, Nara Roesler is pleased to present, in the SOLO project, a selection of new works by Asuka Anastacia Ogawa (b. 1988, Tokyo, Japan), an artist whose practice has been consolidated through the development of a distinctive and highly recognizable language, marked by vibrant, monochromatic backgrounds that stand out for their formal economy. These works are the first created by the artist in Brazil.
Ogawa builds her visual narratives from enigmatic figures, androgyne characters with carefully crafted features, which the artist affectionately refers to as “my babies,” silent yet intense presences inhabiting her canvases. This universe began unexpectedly, when Ogawa, still experimenting with video and digital manipulations, created hybrid images from her own face. Over time, these beings came to play a central role in a pictorial investigation that, while deeply personal, remains open to interpretation, resisting singular or definitive readings.
Her practice brings together influences from diverse cultural and spiritual experiences, reflecting her multifaceted background. Born in Japan, Ogawa spent part of her childhood and teenage years in Petrópolis, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, her maternal family’s hometown. Later, she completed her studies in Sweden and graduated from Central Saint Martins College in London, and she currently lives in Los Angeles, United States.
Popular rituals and festivities in Bahia, Japanese temples and religious traditions, as well as a recent immersion in yoga and meditation, subtly permeate her recent works, engaging themes of corporeality and memory. This spiritual dimension emerges not as illustration but as atmosphere, suggesting states of prayer, celebration, and stillness that flow through her compositions, balancing formal delicacy with symbolic density.
At ArtRio 2025, Ogawa presents a group of paintings produced first during a residency at Pivô Salvador, followed by a residency at Ybytu, in São Paulo. Mingau is one of the works developed during her stay in Salvador and refers to the Caretas do Mingau festivity in Saubara, which originated in the struggle for Bahia’s Independence (July 2, 1823), when women dressed in white to frighten the Portuguese and deliver food to the fighters. The tradition, now almost two centuries old, currently brings together around 20 women who, at dawn on July 2, walk through the streets carrying tapioca and corn porridge, rattles, and chants.
In Inori, we see two characters holding empty bowls in a gesture of prayer, an image evoking both the precariousness of access to food and a desire for transformation, without being bound to literal narratives. In another work, Olives, we find a striking scene alluding to oppression and domination, contrasted with the peaceful and serene expression rendered by the artist. Ogawa prefers that each viewer find their own meanings in the quiet intensity of her figures, which seem to breathe within the space between the visible and the intangible.