Fear, Uneasiness, Terror; the Triplets Conceived off Grief Through Violence.

Yuko Tatsushima. A mysterious artist born in Japan, painting nightmarish characters on her canvases has long been famous worldwide over the internet. Although not much is known about her, one can envision a woman, with spine bent forward, brushes in hand, abusing the canvas with violent strokes and colours with a creepy determination. It feels as if she paints to avenge. To avenge what, will always remain a mystery.

The more I look at her paintings, the more familiar they get. Her piece ‘I Can’t be a Wife Anymore’ (an urban legend says that it is cursed) reeks of abuse and borderline madness. A strangely disproportionate figure of a woman (possibly pregnent) cowers over the viewer through a black and red background that one can see, has been scratched violently. Pupils dilated, eyes lifeless, she smiles through her black lips, a smile that creates no wrinkles on her face. It seems as if blood has been smeared across her crotch. Lifeless, her eyes look for a shoulder to cry on.

Another piece, called ‘White Prison’, shows a woman (young enough to be called a teen but old enough to be stripped off the word ‘child’) sitting straight, legs folded, surrounded by vibrant flowers and wearing a red vibrant dress, rolling back her eyes while her skin carries history of abuse. As a woman who has been made to hate her body as she went through puberty because of being sexualised at an age of twelve or thirteen, I want to sit next to this figure in the canvas, put her head on my shoulder, and rock her back and forth gently, and tell her, “It’s okay.”. It might seem as if the woman is being possessed. But I’d rather say, her soul is being ripped off a body-she used to so mindlessly identify, could so easily look at in a mirror-into one she hardly recognises. And she isn’t ready. She might have looked at her naked body in the mirror, and felt like a stranger.

As someone who paints, I’d do absolutely anything to achieve the artistry to be able to imitate the emotions the way Tatsushima does. Pure, concentrated grief. Why is her art so terrifying, though? Why are her paintings so creepy? The characters she creates on canvas are lifeless, cowering presences who strip the viewer naked of their masculinity. They’re terrifying to the masculine mass because of the unconscious shadows that loom under them, and Tatsushima brings them up to the forefront and serves them in the form of a gory, bloody, truth. The lifeless eyes of the figures in the paintings are magnetic in all the wrong ways. They make it impossible for the audience to tear the gaze away. They recite their story. To everyone. And no matter one is ready to hear or not, they are bound. From a feminine perspective, it evokes either a giving or a taking of comfort. When I see her figures, be it in ‘Red Laugh’ or the paintings mentioned above, I want to hug them. Talk them out of their misery. They look unloved, abandoned, and full to the brim with grief. These nightmare-inducing art that one sees, terrified, looking right back at them without shame and fear, head held high, smiling through crushing pain and borderline madness, echo the stories of women’s wounds left open.

Yuko’s website curates her collection. You can get them from here: http://undergroundfortress.web.fc2.com/