YOSHIAKI NAKAMURA
Born in Tokyo, Japan, Nakamura completed his PhD (Doctoral Course) at Tokyo University of the Arts Japanese Painting in 2015 and his postgraduate studies at Maryland Institute College of Art, USA, in 2020.Born with hearing impairment, language to the artist since childhood was all about soundless characters, faint sound, lipreading movements and gestures of people. The same applies to alphabet, hiragana and the likes, but characters are basically phonetic. Each character itself represents a sound, while viewing a character, the corresponding sound resonates in one’s brain. However, this is only the case if the person has normal hearing. With hearing disability, characters to Nakamura are not phonetic, but are ideograms instead and sounds do not turn into words or languages. In 2012, the artist had a cochlear implant in his right ear. It had a huge impact not only on sounds which he was not able to perceive, but also on colors, light, and even his sense of time. Nakamura's works are full of characters. However, it is not only what can be read as a sentence, but rather it is mostly a list of inconceivable characters. Seeing the work forces viewers with normal hearing to experience what the artist encounters - when sound does not come to mind. Likewise, to Nakamura color exists for this reason - for the world with and without sound to coexist, so that both can perceive without barrier. He received the Hirayama Ikuo Scholarship at Tokyo University of the Arts Japanese Paining in 2009, participated in The Program of Overseas study for Upcoming Artists Fellowship (Agency for Cultural Affairs, Japanese Government) in 2019, and Mount Royal friendship (Maryland Institute College of Art) in 2020.