Lydia Okumura

Born in São Paulo to Japanese parents, Okumura's varied influences, including calligraphy, Japanese painting, the Concrete and Neo-Concrete Brazilian art movements, as well as an exposure to American and European conceptual art, have resulted in a unique cross-cultural approach to minimalism. A series of Okumura's sculptures titled The Appearance were made in 1976 shortly after she moved from Brazil to New York. Each sculpture aligns simple graphite wall drawings with lines of string attached to the floor. The three-dimensional shapes created from these arrangements - including a cube, a triangle, and paired rhombi - are simultaneously voluminous and materially light weight.

In the 1980s, Okumura began developing 'Situations', site-specific geometric installations comprised of color fields painted directly on the wall and connected by pieces of string and drawn graphite lines. Untitled I, Installation at Pratt Institute Gallery, New York 1980 (1980) is a three-dimensional wall drawing connecting two adjacent walls at a corner. Bright purple shapes painted directly on opposing walls are extended from their corners with drawn lines of graphite and string. The three materials used - graphite, string and acrylic paint - are staples of Okumura's atmospheric installations. Okumura's "Situations" introduced bright pigments to her practice, resulting in more visible three-dimensional string constructions.

Born in 1948 in São Paulo, Brazil to a Japanese immigrant family, Lydia Okumura's interest in art was awakened by her father, a trained calligrapher. Before relocating to New York in 1974, Okumura studied at the FAAP School of Visual Arts in São Paulo, staged her first solo exhibition in 1968 at Galerie Veranda in Brazil at the age of nineteen, and was invited to participate in the 1973 São Paulo Biennial as part of the collective Equipe3. Once in New York, Okumura continued her studies at the Pratt Graphics Center. Okumura has participated in five São Paulo Biennials between 1973 and 1984, as well as numerous gallery and institutional exhibitions across the United States, Latin America and Japan. Her work was shown in an important solo exhibition at the Museu de Arte Moderna, São Paulo in 1984 and, more recently, was the subject of an extensive touring US retrospective, Lydia Okumura: Situations, organized by the University of Buffalo (New York) in 2016. Okumura currently lives and works in New York, and is represented by Galeria Jaqueline Martins, São Paulo and Brussels.