In conversation with Mizuki Nishiyama on her new series inspired by Shintoism and paternal soil

This series aptly reflects the relationship between humanity and nature, which have been consistently addressed in your practice. How does nature play a crucial role this time? 

My family believes in Shintoism, which is a Japanese animist religion that pays respect to everything that coincides with nature—air, earth, water, everything. I'm drawn to it because it's almost foreign to me. But at the same time, I'm also very proud to be Japanese, understanding my family lineage, and also understanding how Shintoism plays a role in the everyday life of Japanese. 

Within the canvas, the background is a rendition of abstracted pieces of nature. For example, the curves and undulations become mountains of cliffs. There is something erotic, sensual and almost maternal about all of this; hence, mother nature. 

Yet I am not simply painting landscapes, because it’s still figurative. Instead of painting trees, I would paint the bottoms of trees, the textures of wood, the spirals. There's something very intimate that I want to penetrate through nature. 

Could you explain further about the ‘knife cutting technique’? 

This idea was passed down. I learnt it from my mother, and she learnt from her teacher, who was a well-known Italian impressionist in Florence. He painted on the flatness of a knife to create almost Cubist-type paintings of landscapes in Italy.

Growing up, I’ve always had an aggressive way of doing things. If I were to build pottery, instead of being a detail-oriented person I would hit and slap it to create crazy forms. I want to capture life to its fullest and maximise it, and this is shown in the knife work—instead of the flatness, I would use the tip of the Palette knife against the canvas, because it almost reminds me of fingernails scratching.

What is the significance of combining oil and soil on canvas? 

My grandmother is a Nippon-Ga painter. Traditional Japanese paintings consist of grinding and mixing things that are sticky and dry. She would use ‘Ebisu fan’ which is a paint made of pulverised seashells. It would take a day to just make two colours, making the artwork extremely expensive and delicate. 

I started feeling a connection to soil when visiting the land where my ancestors have been buried since the 1400s. Whenever I went in front of every single grave and knelt down to pay my respect, I felt very close but also very distant to every single one of them. There is something very grounding in connecting with your heritage, especially when we don't do rituals anymore in such a sterile society [as ours].

So I decided to do something with this land, starting by mixing it into the paint oils with a little bit of linseed oil. Using soil requires adding lots of oil, yet avoiding it becoming too oily. It's very much trial and error. 

How do you feel about moving back to Hong Kong again? 

Hong Kong is home. There is a sense of stability and familiarity for me. But also, I wish to exert everything that I’ve learnt and the things that I feel like Hong Kong needs more exposure to. 

There are two ways to answer this: what I want to put out and what I want to absorb. Both ways are quite encouraging and energising, and there's so much more work that could be done here.

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