Puku Puku Bubbles to Zukushi

Harumo Sato 

Jan 2022

Through paintings and public art, I seek to unite our contradictory society. Jungian Psychology points out that one needs to accept their shadow, something that they don’t want to accept as a part of who they are, to grow as a mature individual. I propose that society is an ever-changing organism like our body.

My quest started in 2011, when the Fukushima nuclear power plant exploded due to one of the biggest earthquakes in Japan’s recent history. A relatively small island about the size of California, Japan cannot produce enough electricity to support current consumption unless they rely on nuclear power. “Importance of energy independence” has destroyed Japanese land for at least a century. 

Even after this tragedy, other nuclear plants have continued to run in different regions. Thinking about current life in the Bay Area, this dilemma is similarly found in wildfire frequency and heavy reliance on carbon-intensive transportation. Climate disasters have increased in severity all over the world. I was compelled to find a narrative to help accept and live with this contradiction while committing myself to a hope for our future. 

My Puku Puku Bubbles series, started in 2017, sought universal value beyond cultural/political differences; this is mainly based on ancient artifacts from around the globe, universal unconsciousness by Carl Jung, and Mitochondrial Eve theory. My intention is, as those different disciplines pointed out, to arouse deep empathy with “others” who are closer than we think. The quest of this series is to find a middle ground where everyone can start a conversation.

The Zukushi series, started in 2020, comes from the idea of our body as a noisy, buzzing entity. Our emotions are not only triggered by the brain and outside events, but also our 100 trillion bacteria, both good and bad, living in each of our guts. If we treat our society like an organism, we need to visualize the world where our “enemies” also are necessary elements to compose this entire world as a whole. 

In this series, conflicting chaotic elements tangle up with each other underneath a golden skin: abstract and figurative concepts; oil-based and water-based materials; natural and synthetic media. In Asian culture gold symbolizes nirvana or enlightenment, reflects outside conditions and unites them as a whole. It changes for the viewer depending on the distance, angle, lighting, temperature, and time. This spontaneous visual change reminds us that everything occurs within relationships surrounding us in real-time and only while we pay attention.

It is my view that a collective maturity would be visualizing the world as a place where our loved ones, enemies, and everyone in between are understood as meaningful parts of the whole. Society is ever-changing, but if we can remember to pay attention to the beautiful whole of it all, even small actions can change our society for the better.