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Nana Yamazaki, “Untitled”, Shiga, Japan, c. 2020, Yarn, cotton, and polyester, 68 x 36 in., Col…
Nana Yamazaki
Nana Yamazaki, “Untitled”, Shiga, Japan, c. 2020, Yarn, cotton, and polyester, 68 x 36 in., Col…
Nana Yamazaki, “Untitled”, Shiga, Japan, c. 2020, Yarn, cotton, and polyester, 68 x 36 in., Collection of the American Folk Art Museum, Gift of Will and Mary Evans, 2023.7.1. Photo by Adam Reich.

Nana Yamazaki

(b. 1994)
BiographyNana Yamazaki first became a member at Atelier Yamanami in 2012. As early as 2014, Yamazaki began the practice of taking clothing and pieces of fabric donated to the atelier and covering them in yarn. She has gone on to produce full-body creations, in 2020, and even ensconces furniture in her stitchwork. These works tend to encompass a range of color bases, with a single, unicolored thin yarn strand contouring or outlining the larger figure.

Yamazaki has simultaneously embarked on a series of drawings, whose style would seem to arguably present an inversion of her embroidered works. Each of Yamazaki’s drawings is entitled Fashionable People, taking inspiration from figures seen in fashion magazines. Her drawings show multiplicities of human-like figures that spread across entire canvases, presenting iterations of patterned arrangements of a unicolored scheme. Whereas her embroideries would seem to produce a sculptural form on the basis of the donated clothes she outlines, her drawings instead point toward the extension of a smooth surface.