BRIDGET GUNGOREN
Staff Writer
It’s an unusual, yet beautiful, combination of Japanese warriors, sensual geishas and … Latino graffiti. In his special exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, artist Gajin Fujita has united his Japanese heritage with his East Los Angeles upbringing to create pieces that defy cultural divisions and examine unexpected unions.
Using traditional Japanese methods, Fujita gilds both large and small canvases in shiny gold leaf. The surface then becomes the ultimate backdrop for graffiti artists to personalize and tag with ordinary spray paint. After, with oil-based pastels and paint markers, Fujita stencils perfectly proportioned Japanese warriors and geishas, who seem right at home in front of the Latino tagged background.
Fujita, born in 1972 to Japanese-American parents, was raised in the Latino-dominant neighborhood of Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles.
“I was the minority in the minority,” he said during a talk at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
He grew up sharing his father’s appreciation for Japanese art, Ukiyo-e wood block prints, screen paintings and traditional Japanese characters. It was also during his childhood he was exposed to the world of graffiti. Spending his youth as a tagger, or graffiti artist, street art has been a big influence on his work.
“In junior high, I was bused to school,” he said. “I was exposed to a vast array of street art. I eventually started partaking in tagging, and met up with other street artists.”
It is important to note that tagging graffiti is different from gang graffiti. Gang graffiti is used to identify gang turf or affiliations. Tagging gangs, or crews, although formed within racial and economic boundaries, are considered to be artistic (though still annoying and costly to authorities.)
Tagging crews are out for fame within their own world; they speak their own language. The trend started in 1971 in New York, and made its way to Los Angeles via hip hop culture that promotes the artistic method. Most think of hip-hop as a dance or a musical genre, but those in the sub-culture say it is a way of life; it is urban socialization.
“Graffiti,” he said, “has been given a bad rap in contemporary society; graffiti has been going on forever. You can call cave paintings graffiti … mankind has been scribbling on walls for ages.”
Now the artist brings the scribbling into the studio and considers it to be authentic to the art. “To me, it is authentic,” Fujita said. “It is done with spray paint and materials … in my mind, it is graffiti.” So authentic, he said, that he has actual taggers come to the studio to legitimatize his work. Once a member of the revered tagging gang, K2S, his friends in the genre are extensive, and he lets them have his canvases to express themselves freely.
With eleven newly created pieces for this exhibit, Fujita continues the themes and artistic style seen in his previous shows. However, here there is a difference in the magnetizing piece “Chinita,” where the female body is long and languid, as opposed to perfectly formed female figures found in the rest of his work. Chinita means Asian girl in Spanish slang. Symbolically, Fujita said that he “made her, the figure, fit” on the small rectangular canvas. He likened it to how he felt when trying to fit in, while growing up in his own neighborhood.
“I remember hearing that a lot as a child,” Fujita said of the word, chinita.
The largest piece, “Ride or Die,” depicts a beautifully stenciled Japanese warrior riding in from the left and onto the canvas, shielding a blast of arrows. In signature style, the title, “Ride or Die,” is in big graffiti-type letters filling the bottom right corner. The tagged background especially complements the warrior theme; this soldier is riding into a land of diversity, while the arrows seem to signify a land of adversity.
The Los Angeles skyline and palm trees, as in many of Fujita’s pieces, are also in the backdrop. “I am trying to convey the life of a boy who grew up metropolitan and cosmopolitan at the same time,” he said.
Many of his compositions, he said, are spontaneous and impulsive, but the Ride or Die idea was something he’d wanted to depict. ‘Ride or die’ is a hip-hop theme — an urban way of looking at life. It’s about fast living and not getting caught.
The gold leaf in Fujita’s work has almost a royal feel to it, which is in extreme contrast to the graffiti. Yet, maybe there is no contrast at all: Fujita’s warrior wears the headpiece of a crown, not armor.
“The crown in the graffiti world means king,” Fujita explained. “Meaning, I rule this block.”
The Edo-period in Japan was a large influence on Fujita. The era, known for brilliant colors and strong linear figures set against gold-leaf backdrops, seems alive and well in Fujita’s work. Interesting enough though, the Edo-period began in the early 1600s, in which a rigid and structured society was formed, shutting the door to the outside world. Fujita seems to have taken the beauty of that time and flung the door wide open. He opened it to the Latino graffiti world and blends two cultures seamlessly. This exhibit will be open to the public until Feb. 12.
01-26-2006
