My current artistic practice reimagines the traditional folding fan through using modern techniques found in sculpture, drawing and engraving. I interpret the fan into the context of today by laser-cutting them out of un-conventional materials such as perspex, metal, and glass. Referencing my Japanese heritage, I engrave and pigment-dye drawings of fantasy, desire, love and violence that otherwise might prove challenging to express.

By covering the works in detailed engravings and cutouts, the fans display a complex, self- determined lattice of symbology. Used to convey hidden messages within their designs, ancient Japanese fans represent devices of communication used to hide one’s true emotion from society. Referencing myriad sources ranging from Western movie posters to biblical illustrations, textile patterns, Art Nouveau design and organic forms, while abstracted on single blades, once folded outwards the full engraved tableau becomes complete. My sculptures become motifs of deception, markers of a human instinct to oscillate between hiding and revealing our own image. Denying their essential usefulness as handheld, personal objects, my fans are enlarged to oversize classic proportions. Some display sharpened, knife-like ends while others seems ready to pierce if hurled in battle. By reimagining the form and function of folding fans in this way, I challenge their associative qualities as delicate or flamboyant and re-establishes them as weapons of defense.