I have been painting faces for more than twenty years, especially the eyes of strangers. It always seems like I was avoiding the subject that it was right under my nose for so long, maybe because it wasn't the right time to face it head-on. Like a macro lens if you are too close you can't see the whole figure in front of you.
I am guessing this long road of painting unknown faces was an unconscious getaway to avoid remembering, an attempt for me to push everything inside. I was still able to see a glimmer of what really matters to me.
I was carrying all that emotional baggage since the day my father was taken. The weight is/was always there like a huge rucksack on my back.
Each day something or someone reminded me who and what was missing because I never had a definite closure, I've never known what happened to my dad so it was also mixed with that wishful thinking that maybe somewhere, somehow he was alive, living his life, but he wasn't coming back to us because he lost his memory due to trauma. It happened before to some "desaparecidos". Either way, I was still willing to carry with such weight over my shoulders instead of letting it all go, pain was the connection that I had with my father and the past where I left him, that past that I would have given anything to make it go in a different way.
Finally after all these years, the fog is lifting and now it's time to let go everything like a volcano that inevitably spills everything that I kept inside to avoid thinking what was stolen from my life, what I lost, the road I didn't choose, who I left behind, which event or series of events made my story.
I think the creative route that I had to take due to my personal history wasn't trod upon yet until today, right here, right now.
I had an enlightenment where I was able to see things the way they are, the way they were and the reason why I couldn't do it before.
I was reading a book about Carlos Gorriarena, Argentinean artist and the first painting teacher who artistically "shook me up", who thought that I had something to offer as an artist and who pushed me to pursue portraiture.
I read one Picasso's phrase in Gorriarena's book "Painting is not meant to decorate apartments, painting is an offensive and defensive instrument against the enemy"
This phrase resonated completely with what I was already contemplating. I don't want to paint soulless pretty pictures just because I can and it's pleasing to the eye. I want my paintings to be simple with content, driven with a purpose that means something to me and also to whom is looking at them.
To get to this point there were several catalyzers that led me to open my eyes and look at things straight on without leaving anything pending. It all started with a series of conversations with the usual friends, and something a little bit different, a chat with a Japanese-Argentinean journalist who has been writing a book about the "Desaparecidos nikkei" (Disappeared Japanese-Argentinean citizens) among them my father Oscar Oshiro. I have a close circle of friends that I call family, few are new in that group for being so selective. Sometimes one shows up uninvited and turns out to be a welcoming surprise. Andrés Asato had Mary Higa's recommendation, that meant a lot to me since she was one of my mother's friend and she had a common cause since her brother was another "desaparecido nikkei". For more than ten years the two of them, fiercely looked for my dad, for Mary's brother and other desaparecidos.
I decided to share what we had to go through in that period plus anecdotes about my dad after I read the Asato's book chapter about Oscar Oshiro. For me it was too impersonal, I didn't feel it was right that someone like my father with so much potential to offer to the world had so many blank pages.
Andrés and I started digging the past, a very arduos mental work for me, but it was necessary if we wanted to use anything for his book. That is how the process started, like a domino effect I had the urge to put in words the prologue for my "Faccioni Nikkei" (Big Faces) series, to reach a decision about purging through painting all that dark period, to organize thoughts and my intentions. I also know when I start waving the brush on the canvas one part of my brain will take over and when I am done painting I will understand where this is going.
The face that I was desperately trying to paint was my father's. That long time spent tuning pictorial techniques, mixed media experiments were all to being able to find at least on canvas that person who disappeared overnight against his will. He left that five year old little girl bewildered, not sure what to feel anymore.
I sought to reflect myself in my dad's image, looking for words that my dad could have spoken, he was so wise, optimistic, idealistic. He had a clear idea about how the world around him should be and he had the courage to fight for his convictions no matter the consequences.
To tell the truth I got more questions than answers for him. I could only imagine what he would have answered. I suppose it's the same for the other relatives of "Desaparecidos Nikkei" who also lost their loved ones, and here lies the need to paint not only my "old man" but also those who died in similar circumstances.
I thought about painting the other thirty thousand desaparecidos/disappeared in Argentina, but a project of that magnitude would be almost impossible to complete unless other artists would join me.
Since I like to finish what I start, I decided to keep my work in a smaller scale but at the same time that I can relate to in first person. It's best to take one step at a time so I can concentrate in the present.
The idea to have represented in my mind my father's face, not just in black and white like the faded, neutral driver license picture that appears on flags and websites, but I would like to keep in my mind something so much more concrete, my father as a person, loved deeply by my family, his friends and me, not just another victim of the State terrorism.
I want to be able to answer to myself; What did he inspire me as human being?
What heritage did he leave for my children?
What did he give me when he passed his torch?
This is an explanation for some people that are not familiar with the "Desaparecidos" and I am also answering some questions that someone asked.
The sixteen people that I am painting were kidnapped, tortured and killed by the Argentinian military dictatorship, we‘ve never found their remains, they were made disappeared, they were taken so they couldn’t have a voice so that they were invisible. They were not dead not alive because their bodies were put in mass graves, it was difficult to have a death certificate, too.
What they wanted was a better world, without oppression and freedom, they had dreams and love to help people in need. Actually there were other 30000 disappeared that wanted the same but I am picking the 16 Japanese desaparecidos because of my dad and because they were different from the other Japanese people living in Argentina at the time.
The typical Japanese living in Argentina was introverted, hermetic, didn’t marry or mix with other races,had in mind to return to Japan, submitted completely to authority even if that meant submitting to a murderous government. It was the Japanese idiosyncrasy. The way they were.
Not the case of the 16 Japanese desaparecidos. They were outspoken, they mixed with other races, they wanted to be part of their new country and they embraced the culture, they wanted to be part of a change for good.
In Argentina when the dictatorship was in charge people didn’t have basic human rights and the military did not respect the Constitution.
We couldn’t talk freely and demand anything from the government. In order to complete the project I have to share it with people I need to keep the desaparecidos memory alive, to make them not “invisible”.
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