ABOUT

The core of an experience is intentionality. The human experience of the passage of time, and the processes of birth, growth, emotion, age, memory and death are fundamental to the soul and spirituality of people and places.

Tessa Shimizu is a Japanese/American artist, born and raised on the border of France and Switzerland. Driven by the world around her, she translates her observations and understandings primarily through the tools of analog photography, video work and other hands-on process oriented methods. Embracing a somber and surrealist approach, she continues to explore her cultural and psychological identity through alternative or experimental techniques, such as the use of long and multiple exposures or overlapping negatives. This allows her to obscure and reveal dynamically with intention, creating compositions of personal visions and often resulting in textures reminiscent of how dreams and memories are recalled -- in fragmented, blended and isolated moments. Over the years, she has often been caught in a feeling of liminality; in search of understanding the abstracted moments we go through as humans.

Over the years, she has dived into various ideas that relate back to the concepts of being human. The human experiences of time and space - exploring memory and history within the passing of time and in conjunction with all the experiences woven between people. Initially triggered by the death of her grandfather, Shimizu began to focus these elements of the human condition and embracing the essence of liminality. Never quite settling for one way of life, one way of being, one path to follow. Always in search of understanding the abstracted moments, and how to channel them into visual representations - there is a hope that people and the collective consciousness find comfort or relatability within her work.

Feeling the conscious and subconscious reflections,

                   Seep into the cracks, 

leak out into the

                   open.

  Dipping into the unfamiliar.

         Washing up 

                                 onto an empty,

sun-kissed shore.

Someone not quite here, but not quite there.

Shimizu currently resides in Oakland, CA and is one of the co-founders of a creative collective known as “ & The Others".
Additionally, Shimizu contributes to Oakland based retro futurist art/music collective “Smartbomb” — https://smartbomboakland.com