Hanafuda 

Hanafuda – or flower cards in Japanese – are a deck of playing cards that can be used for a variety of games. Card games were brought to Japan with the French missionary Francis Xavier in 1549 – Nintendo most known to the populace as a video games company – was actually formed in 1889 and their first line of business was Hanafuda cards.

Hanafuda my “Cyborgia -Hanafuda” painting series: Ukiyoe “Floating world” describes : living in the moment, being detached from the bothers of life. From this premise I wanted to explore the simulation of my organic memory by creating a series of landscapes from within my organic metaverse – 36 landscapes are depicted in various guises of memories -voids and notions of the self with the mediated body depicted in abstracted mechanistic iterations – the reason for the 36 is a homage to Hokusai’s 36 views of mount Fuji – at the time of creation I was 36 – the creation of 36 works to explore the self and influences connected to my work. My fascination with Japanese visual art particularly the woodblock prints of Hokusai and Utagawa Kuniyoshi.