EN
ARTWORKS
Abu and Hub
Year: 2023
Material: Mixed media
Size: H1800 W7875 mm
Location: Exterior wall (west revetment side)
Photo courtesy of: Yanbaru Art Festival 2023-2024
Work Commentary:
In Okinawa, I encountered photographs of elderly women’s hands marked with hajichi—traditional tattoos that once adorned women across the Ryukyu Islands. These women took pride in their hajichi, competing over whose were most beautiful. However, after tattooing was banned, values shifted and hajichi became stigmatized. The weathered, deeply lined hands I saw—bearing faded hajichi—struck me as powerful and beautiful. With age, women’s essential strength emerges. These seemed like hands strong enough to catch a habu snake. This mural honors that lost tradition while celebrating the beauty and resilience in women’s hands today.
*Abu = grandmother (Yonaguni dialect)
PROFILE
Keeenue is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, three-dimensional works, collage, and digital live painting. Her name derives from the katakana pronunciation of her birth name, KANA (ケーエーエヌエー).
Known for her visually striking body of work, Keeenue creates art that integrates seamlessly into urban spaces while maintaining a commanding presence. Widely recognized as a mural artist, she navigates fluidly between art and commerce, figuration and abstraction, digital and analog—continually offering new visual experiences through her distinctive command of color and form.
Her creative process is rooted in self-dialogue, giving visual form to the questions and tensions that emerge from within. Embracing her own evolution, she listens closely to the sensations of each moment, infusing her imagery with a sense of lightness and play. Refusing to be confined by conventional frameworks, she discovers new possibilities within intentional imbalance and asymmetry.
Keeenue invites viewers to construct their own narratives through her work, offering space for personal interpretation and connection. As an ever-evolving artist, she continues to create work that is both visually captivating and intellectually engaging.
1992 Born in Kanagawa, Japan
2016 B.A. in Graphic Design, Tama Art University, Tokyo
Lives and works in Chigasaki, Japan
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