Portland Japanese Garden exhibit celebrates resilience through art of ceramic repair

Kintsugi is the traditional Japanese art of repairing ceramics with lacquer and gold dust. The idea is to highlight the imperfections of a piece and celebrate its new form, rather than hide its chips and cracks. Artist Naoko Fukumaru wasn’t initially interested in kintsugi — as a conservator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Arts and other institutions, she was focused on rendering imperfections invisible. But after the collapse of her marriage following her move to Canada, she began to appreciate the message of resilience and reinvention that are fundamental to the practice.

Fukumaru’s first solo kintsugi exhibition in the U.S. is currently on display at the Portland Japanese Garden and runs through Jan. 27. She joins us to talk more about the exhibit and the message she hopes visitors take from it.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. The Vancouver, B.C.-based artist, Naoko Fukumaru, spent much of her career erasing evidence of the cracks and fissures that can come from age or trauma. She was an art conservator with a focus on ceramics. And at institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Detroit Institute of Arts, it was her job to render imperfections invisible. In recent years though she’s taken a very different tack. She’s explored the 500-year-old Japanese art of kintsugi in which broken ceramics are repaired in ways that highlight the imperfections of a piece and celebrate the new form, rather than hiding the chips and the cracks.

Fukumaru’s first solo kintsugi exhibition in the U.S. is on display right now at the Portland Japanese Garden. It runs through January 27, and she joins us now. It’s great to have you on Think Out Loud.

Naoko Fukumaru: Hi, Dave. Thank you for having me.

Miller: I understand that you grew up in a third or fourth generation auction house in Kyoto. What role did art and artifacts play in your early life?

Fukumaru: So I was, yeah, grown up in an auction family. So I visit my auction family regularly and grew up with fascinating antiques and fine art. And my father was teaching me: what is this, how old, who made it and how much it cost. But at the same time, I had a bit of a struggle because I am a girl. The business family in Kyoto, it is especially like a long landing generation, they needed a boy. So my family got first with my sister. That’s OK, because traditionally one girl and two boys are perfect for the Japanese family, because the older sister can take care of two younger brothers.

So when I was born as a second girl, all my family were disappointed and they left the hospital with sadness. So I felt something like I was kind of not perfect and wanted in the family because I was a girl. And then my brother came six years after me, and all the attention, love and everything went to my brother. So I had a lot of arguments and frustration while I was a child.

And the repair was something [that] actually came into during my childhood. My mom was struggling to untangle her gold chain necklace. I was witnessing it, her frustration, after she tried for like one hour. I asked her, “mom, I can try to help you.” And then I did it in like five minutes and it was actually fun. And then I look at my mom and she had a big smile and happy. I thought like, “oh, wow, even me, I can make someone happy and making my mom smile.” So I was actually very passionate and obsessed to fix something since then because this was the way to validate myself.

Miller: Were you always interested in ceramics?

Fukumaru: So, we use ceramic during eating in my home and my father was an antique auctioneer. And when something is broken in an auction house, like chipped or cracked that he can’t sell, so he was adopting all these ceramics and brought them back home. And then my mother was cooking food and serving into these ceramics. So we are eating with beautiful ceramics that always [has] cracks or chips on the ceramics. So I was really attracted by all these broken ceramics and I’m sure my parents are feeding baby food with broken chip ceramics. So I never actually separated with broken ceramics.

Then, because of my passion of repair and having these ceramics, everyday life, I went to study ceramic conservation in England. And I got a masters degree in the conservation of ceramics. And then my passion and whole system became my carrier.

Miller: How much did the sexism that you experienced in your family lead you to leave Japan to go to study in the UK?

Fukumaru: Yeah. I can talk without any sad emotion because I managed to transform my sadness and frustration to a happy story now. So when I was 19 years old, I was talking with grandma, and my grandma told me “we are all just disappointed because you are a girl and you are an unwanted child.” So I was like, oh, OK, actually it made sense. Oh, that’s why! When I was young, I didn’t understand about the sexism of Japan and the culture. My parents gave me decent love, but it was a very big difference between me and my brother. So I could see this difference. So I didn’t know the reason why – because I did something wrong, because I’m not cute enough, I’m not smart enough? But when I was 19 years old, my grandma told me that and I thought, that’s it. I needed to hear that.

And then, OK, I have to leave Japan because I had a comfortable life, like a house, clean clothes and warm food. So I had to look for the true meaning of why I was born and why I was unwanted … who and why? So I had to leave this comfortable life, to jump into England. I wasn’t speaking good English, or my score of the English was very bad in high school and college. But that’s why it was very good because I had to start learning language, and then I had to show who am I and searching. So that’s why I left Japan when I was 19 years old.

Miller: What was the highest praise that people would give you when you had finished restoring, say, a broken piece of pottery in the Western tradition?

Fukumaru: Well they are always amazed like, “oh you can apply magic because it’s all disappeared.” So people are happy. But I didn’t see further than that, this happiness, until I started doing kintsugi. When people are bringing broken ceramics to me, either restoring with kintsugi or hidden away over the Western way, they are all sad, they are angry, they dread, they feel shame about they broke their loved [one’s] ceramics, or someone broke [them] and they are angry about. So they come with the same negative emotion. And then after I restore with the kintsugi, people look at it, how the finished product is so beautiful. Actually, it’s more beautiful than before it was broken. So they even say like, “oh, I’m so happy I broke this” or “I’m happy my dog broke this.” And I was like, what? I never had this compliment when I was doing hidden restoration. So I could see healing of their sufferers through this kintsugi application.

Miller: What made you turn to kintsugi after so long practicing the Western style of leaving no trace, of erasing the imperfections and making it seem like nothing had ever happened?

Fukumaru: Well, I was proud about how I am able to manage to imitate the broken, missing section with exactly the same color, same texture and the people cannot notice. But when I met kintsugi, I was completely broken. My 21-years marriage just ended. And actually, I went through domestic violence for all this period and I evacuated to the women’s shelter. Then, how I became strong enough to live was because I moved to Canada in 2018 and immersing myself into the true nature, caring community and true, honest friends made me very strong to seek help and also able to see that I wanted to keep this family together. Even showing all this, I was receiving violence and showing violence to my children. I thought that was wrong.

After one year later, I evacuated the women’s shelter with my two children. And then I thought I was going to get better. But in fact, all the grief, trauma, the post-separation abuse started to happen. So I really sunk into the bottom of my life. And then kintsugi came into my life. So I was seeking something to love to get out from this darkness. And kintsugi just perfectly came into my life and I just started practicing one after another, broken ceramics. It’s completely opposite of Western hidden way. But restoring and understanding ceramic itself is same. So I managed to catch up very easily, the kintsugi techniques.

Miller: One of your works was made using a Persian earthenware plate that was originally created anywhere from 700 to 1,000 years ago, it’s not clear exactly when. It has gold and beautiful green resin, looks like it’s veined like a mineral. But you kept two not small triangular holes. I mean, if you put water in this plate, it would fall right through. Why did you keep those holes there?

Fukumaru: Yes, that’s a very interesting question. At the beginning when I was doing kintsugi, I was focusing on traditional kintsugi and because I was seeking the healing. But when I start healing more, I start to create space inside of me and also freedom to express my feelings with artwork. So normally, in a Western way, when there is a big piece missing, we create exactly the same shape and exactly the same color to make it invisible. But I thought, oh, because this part is broken, we can see the cross section of the ceramics, like this is blue ceramic. But in fact, inside, there is the white pale color with burraneura texture and only outside has very smooth green, blue, grays. So if this board was not broken, we can’t see it.

So I thought this brokenness and emptiness had a meaning to it, we can learn from this and it’s not a negative thing. I just wanted to put these messages. Sometimes we are completely smashed and we can’t find any more, our fragments. It’s OK because it is beautiful as it is. But we can put our love and the care, and also its emptiness is also shining through this way.

Miller: Another of your works is based on a 3,000-year-old Persian terracotta jug that seems to have big white plaster crystals growing out of it all around it. The work is called “Beautiful Trauma.” What does that title mean to you?

Fukumaru: Yeah. So this one is more later artwork, because I’m trying to work on my trauma from the domestic violence, which was 21 years during the marriage and also after the separation started to happen, the post-separation abuse. So it’s almost 25 years of harassment and abuse. It’s still a very fresh wound and I’m not able to work very handy. But I just started working on that after I started working on my childhood stuff and then I became stronger. So I wanted to transform my negative trauma energy to something positive and powerful.

Through the art, I managed to process inside of me. And then when the negative energy is so powerful, when I process and then bring to positive, also positive is very, very powerful. So the crystals takes very long time with a high pressure and the heat. The crystal form is representing the transformation of trauma to something beautiful and powerful. So that was my, yes, first time I started working on my big “T” Trauma of the domestic violence through this artwork.

Miller: I mentioned that that jug was made something like 3,000 years ago. The rest of us can see these works in a museum. But you’re working with them, you’re touching them and in a way that, I don’t know, just strikes me, I imagine, as very intimate. Do you ever wonder about the people who made them – artists or crafts people – who had probably messy human lives 3,000 years ago?

Fukumaru: Well, I think we have a more messier life than years ago.

Miller: Maybe … who knows?

Fukumaru: All these technologies, we have too much comfort and the more comfort makes more ego. And they had a much simpler life. They had to make, if they want to cook something. They can’t just ask Uber to deliver. They have to hunt, they have to cut, they have to preserve, they have to make fire. I think, I feel they have more peaceful life.

Miller: They were too busy to be messy because they were just surviving, in other words.

Fukumaru: Yes.

Miller: Naoko Fukumaru, I could talk with you all hour, but we’ve got 10 seconds left. Thank you so much for joining me.

Fukumaru: Oh, thank you very much.

Miller: It was a real pleasure talking with you and your work is absolutely beautiful. Thank you.

Fukumaru: Thank you, Dave. Thank you.

Miller: That is the artist and conservator, Naoko Fukumaru.

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