Geheim Gallery featured Art BFA alumna Elly Minagawa
There is a sharp yearning that coincided with my girlhood, where I would (and still do sometimes) amplify benign moments of tenderness into some larger, grander story in which I could romanticize my life with complete abandon. Flavored lip gloss, friendship bracelets, and cell phone charms were indicators of the overlapping eras of girlishness and being a young woman. These most recent paintings are images that resemble a strong and courageous inner world of girlhood; a wistful headspace enveloped by the allure of y2k glamour and a self- ordained independence. Sourcing references from defunct corners of the internet (i.e. a teenager’s Flickr account from 2003 or free use clip art websites) is a form of observation of myself as a young woman as well as the culture that I felt so voyeuristic towards growing up. Airbrushing offers a method of painting that is an avenue for my teenage self’s obsession with drawing to be realized in a more developed way. This body of work is my offering to the endlessly operating machine of digital information; it is a reorganizing of visual material into an ode to my generation's collective youth.
Recent Art BFA graduate (2022) from Western, and active artist in the community, Elly Minagawa was recently featured at the Geheim Gallery on Bay Street. The exhibition, Green River, expresses themes of growing up as a young woman in the era of flip phones and Y2K.
As a Japanese- American from Seattle, Elly thoughtfully considers her heritage and upbringing in her art. Her paintings portray realistic imagery with distorted compositions.
The transcription of digital distortion into painting and printmaking has allowed me to imbue into the work a multitude of sentiments that I associate with my heritage in a way that is true to my experience growing up in an ever-increasingly digitized world. By forming images that hold distinct digital qualities I seek to highlight the incongruence of learning about traditions and rituals through the internet. Through the combination of oversaturated day-glo colors and extreme distortion I am interested in creating a language of images in which dissonance and color articulate ideas of remembrance and contemplation.
Elly Minagawa's exhibition artwork is still on display, and for sale, on the Geheim Gallery website.
