Arisa Kumagai was born in Osaka, Japan in 1991. She received her B.A. in Oil Painting and M.A. in Mixed Media from Kyoto University of the Arts. Her work has been recognized with several awards, including the Excellence Award at the university’s graduation exhibition, the Akira Asada Prize, and selections for The Ueno Royal Museum Prize and Shell Art Award. She was also a designated scholarship recipient of The Sato International Cultural Scholarship Foundation, The Sato Art Museum, and The Japan Arts and Culture Foundation. 

Kumagai currently lives and works in Japan. She works primarily in oil painting with mixed media. Kumagai explores the emotional and psychological dimensions of intimacy, memory, and domestic life. Her installations and images, often drawn from personal objects and fragmented narratives, create delicate yet unsettling environments that blur the line between inner experience and external reality. Her work has been exhibited widely across Japan and internationally, including at Powerlong Museum in Shanghai, Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art, and The National Art Center Tokyo.

Can you tell us about your background and how you started your artistic journey?

My name is Arisa Kumagai. I was born in Osaka, Japan, and went to an art high school. I graduated from Kyoto University of the Arts in oil painting and completed my master’s degree in comprehensive design at the same university.

My grandparents ran a small boutique specializing in Italian high fashion. My father and mother were both fashion designers, and met and married at the same company, and later took over my grandparents’ boutique.

My family relationships were complicated, but my cultural capital was very high, and I grew up surrounded by fashion, movies, manga, and literature. I was very introverted child, and I loved to stay at home and draw, but I was in an environment that respected that.

When I was in kindergarten, I won the top prize in a small painting competition. Looking at it now, it’s not a special painting that anyone would see as having obvious talent. It’s a childlike, adorable painting. But it was enough to make me, as a child, aspire to become a painter in the purest of ways.

How do you stay inspired and motivated to create new work?

My inspiration always comes from my own experiences and emotions. Getting the news from around the world on my smartphone, giving and receiving flowers from loved ones, feeling intense anger towards social and political injustice, visiting religious facilities and praying, appreciating and discussing all kinds of artworks, sleeping well…all of these are extensions of my daily life, and they are my experiences and emotions, and they are all my inspiration and motivation.

How do your personal experiences and identity influence your art?

My work as an artist started from my own family history. As mentioned above, my family had high cultural capital, but at the same time, it was a dysfunctional family.

The family boutique was located right behind the red light district, and many of the children living in that town had complicated family backgrounds. My father had mental illness and repeatedly attempted suicide in front of us and beat us. A particularly big event was when I had just finished graduate school, my father’s decomposed body was discovered. My father was still young, in his early 50s. He lived alone in his house, and died alone in the winter, and no one found him until the smell came out in the spring.

He was that poor and lonely. From there, my iconic series, the “Single bed” series, began. These are paintings the size of a life-size single bed. There is always a memento mori lying in this single bed, and within it there is a very personal love and hate, as well as a strong criticism of the social problem of loneliness that goes beyond the individual.

Once I became clearly aware that the issues my family faced were not closed problems, but were strongly connected to social issues, my creative awareness as an artist expanded greatly.

Can you elaborate on your decision to employ a highly realistic painting style in your work?

In university, I was captivated by modern and contemporary art, and my creative practice focused on abstract expression.Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko…I still love those artists.

However, the true origin of my artistic expression and the one that has never left me is the religious paintings of the Baroque period by Caravaggio and Velasquez, which I saw when I was in high school. I was so moved by their paintings that I chose to express myself in oil. I was also surrounded from birth by Christian art-inspired fashions, such as Gianni Versace’s, which was also a significant factor in my choice.

After a long search for a way of expression, I returned to my roots in order to paint my family history. It was necessary for me to face the motifs for a long time in order to sublimate the unbearable love and hatred that I have. In order to create a realistic expression, it is necessary to observe the subject in detail, and then, with my interpretation and direction, make it appear as a painting. I interpret this as a kind of violence and obsession.

In addition, I do not complete a painting in one piece, but rather, I often use diptychs and triptychs, and I also focus on textual expression such as poems. I want to expand the narrative power of my work.

In each solo exhibition, I aim to create an intimate and introspective viewing experience. Just as there are religious paintings in churches or huge Buddha images in temples, I want my work to be like that.

What challenges have you faced as an artist, and how have you overcome them?

My production takes a long time for each piece, and I spend a lot of time working in solitude and seclusion. Therefore, I am aware that it is easy to fall into a narrowing of thought and perspective.

Each time this happens, I think I am able to face the challenges of the moment by going out and meeting and talking with real people, and by being willing to dive into communities of interest as much as possible.

I believe that everything is difficult to overcome completely, and I find it enriching to continue to have challenges.

What advice would you give to emerging artists trying to establish themselves?

Meet many people and their works. Be influenced and challenged by many new ways of expression and ideas. But never forget your original experiences. Remember what you truly believe is beautiful and what you want to believe. Growing taller will help you grow, but do not lie to yourself. Being true to yourself and to others is the most important thing for an artist.

Text & photo courtesy of Arisa Kumagai

Website: https://arisakumagai.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arisakumagai_art/