Linocut on gampi paper handmade by artist, 2023
Crusher is a hand-carved and hand-printed linocut on gampi paper made by Hatanaka. The image depicts wind-blown, ephemeral snow formations, the fragile nature of which gestures to the precarious state of ice. As in many of Hatanaka’s works, Crusher considers how we are connected via changing waterways.
Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka is a Japanese-Canadian artist based in Toronto. In her practice she brings together historical craft technologies of her heritage including ink, natural dye, printmaking, and papermaking. She carries the beauty and possibilities of environmentally sustainable traditions forward into the future. In her approach to wearable sculpture, she removes the boundaries between craft, fashion, and art. Hatanaka’s intentional choice of materiality supports the concepts embedded in her work, which include interconnectedness, impacts of globalization on communities integrally grounded in specific lands, and collapsing time to layer ancestry and past versions of self.
Hatanaka has exhibited her work at the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa); the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto); the British Museum (London); the Toronto Biennial of Art, Guanlan Original Printmaking Base (Shenzhen); the Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre (Burnaby); and Harper’s (New York).