{"person":[{"sourceId":{"label":"Source ID","value":"3062"},"lastName":{"label":"Last Name","value":"Yamazaki"},"endDate":{"label":"Death Date","value":"0"},"displayName":{"label":"Name","value":"Nana Yamazaki"},"objects":{"label":"Objects","value":{"objectTitle":"Untitled","objectNumber":"2023.7.1","objectID":"8811"}},"geographyDied":{"label":"Died","value":["","Kōka City"]},"biography":{"label":"Biography","value":"Nana Yamazaki covers clothing with yarn and thread until the original garment is unrecognizable. Under the weight and warping of the stitching, the fabric distorts and puckers into new forms. Rather than using knots, she sews multiple pieces of thread or yarn in a rainbow of colors in one place until it all fixes together. This process gives her works a dense texture, like the fur of some unruly animal, and they are further enhanced by random cuts to the lengths of thick wool yarn. In her largest pieces, she transforms furniture and jumpsuits so they appear to be fantastic beings. In a world with an abundance of cast-off clothing, Yamazaki gives discarded textiles new life.Yamazaki was born in 1994 and lives in the Shiga Prefecture in Japan. Since 2012, she has been a member of Atelier Yamanami in Kōka City, a workshop that supports the art practices of people with disabilities. Fashion is an ongoing interest for Yamazaki. Her early art was drawing: she would sketch row after row of posed fashion models\u2014based on images from magazines\u2014in ballpoint pen on paper, carefully giving each a distinct style. Around 2014, this passion evolved into the transformation of donated shirts, belts, coveralls, scarves, and other pieces into fiber art. Over time her work has become increasingly elaborate, with more and more thread and yarn enveloping the clothing, so it becomes unwearable and is reborn as a sculptural object.Her work was featured in the 2018 exhibition <em>Art Brut from Japan, Another Look<\/em> at the Collection de l\u2019Art Brut in Lausanne, Switzerland, and the 2022 exhibition <em>Mirror Mirror\u2014Fashion & the Psyche<\/em> at MoMU: Fashion Museum Antwerp and Dr. Guislain Museum in Ghent, Belgium.Allison C. Meier, 2025Text written as part of \u201cRethinking Biography,\u201d an initiative supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)."},"geographyActive":{"label":"Active","value":["","Kōka City"]},"geographyBorn":{"label":"Born","value":["","Kōka City"]},"beginDate":{"label":"Birth Date","value":"1994"},"firstName":{"label":"First Name","value":"Nana"},"textEntries":{"label":"Text Entries","value":["Nana 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\u2019s 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.","http://a-yamanami.jp/artworks/artists/558/"]},"primaryMedia":{"value":"https://collection.folkartmuseum.org/internal/media/dispatcher/26972/full"},"names":{"label":"Names","value":"Nana Yamazaki"},"displayDate":{"label":"Date","value":"(b. 1994)"},"id":{"label":"Id","value":"151684"}}]}