Tom Thomson Shack Artist Residency: Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka
“Namazu”, washi patchwork (scraps collected over three years), printmaking, natural dye, ink, paper rice bags, (approx 70x128”), 2023 Installation view: Patel Brown Gallery. Photo credit: Jean-Michael Seminaro
June – October 2024
About the Exhibition
For the month of June, the McMichael will welcome Toronto-based artist Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka to the Tom Thomson Shack for an artist residency. During the residency, Hatanaka will use the shack where Thomson painted some of his most beloved canvases as her studio space, creating a new large-scale work that will remain on view until mid-October.
Hatanaka’s practice incorporates historical print and papermaking techniques and engages deeply with slow, land-based materials including natural dyes and washi, a Japanese paper made by hand using fibers from the inner bark of trees and shrubs.
The artist invites visitors to drop-in and learn more about her work in the Thomson Shack from 1 to 2pm, Thursdays and Fridays in June.
About the Exhibition
In June 2024 Toronto-based artist Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka (b. 1988) undertook an artist residency in the historic Tom Thomson Shack at McMichael. The resulting project, Final Gasp of the Nervous System, responds to the natural environment and evokes personal and collective resilience in response to mental health struggles and the looming climate crisis. Using traditional Japanese washi paper and other handmade paper from southeast Asia, Hatanaka’s works combine various printmaking, dyeing, and painting techniques.
Displayed on the left is the linocut assemblage Faultlines and Loneliness (2024) a work that contrasts imagery of the landscape with a line that traces the increased use of the word “loneliness” in publications over time. In Aftershocks (2024), displayed at the centre, gyotaku (traditional Japanese fish prints) are sewn together with linoprints of rolling landscapes, ink brush paintings, and traditional paper. On display at right is a lino block print matrix used by Hatanaka in the printmaking process.
The work can be viewed on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from 12 pm to 3 pm, when the Thomson Shack will be open for visitors to experience the project at their leisure.
About Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka
Alexa Hatanaka is a visual artist working primarily in relief printmaking, textile and paper. She engages in time-intensive, historic processes that support her thinking around community-building, environment, and persisting and honouring evolving cultural practices, such as papermaking and kamiko, the Japanese practice of sewing garments out of konnyaku starch-strengthened washi (paper). Hatanaka draws upon her Japanese-Canadian heritage in the scope and spirit of craft heirlooms, solidarity, individual and communal grit, cultural hybridity, and social justice.
Hatanaka creates public artwork, installations and performance work with community, collaboratively, and engaging youth, which includes her work as founding member of Kinngait, Nunavut-based collective Kinngarni Katujjiqatigiit (2019-ongoing) and Embassy of Imagination (2014-2020). Hatanaka has exhibited at the Guanlan International Printmaking Base (Shenzen, China), The Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada House (London, UK), the Toronto Biennial of Art, the British Museum (London, UK) and NADA House Art Fair (New York). She is represented by Patel Brown Gallery in Toronto.
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