Claudia Kogachi, It Is What It Is

Claudia Kogachi’s work leans into the personal. The artist frequently depicts herself and members of her family carrying out everyday and leisure activities, using these to explore interpersonal dynamics and emotional states. Early paintings show her and her mother engaging in competitive pursuits, such as boxing and table tennis, which become metaphors for the combative dimension of the parent–child relationship. Lately, she has been creating pictorial tufted rugs, a practice she began during last year’s nationwide lockdown. Products of a slow and arduous making process, the works reflect a growing interest in questions of labour and precarity.

Kogachi’s first solo exhibition with us, It Is What It Is, centres on seven paintings (including two diptychs), which depict the artist and her partner being assaulted or impeded by a variety of creatures while they attempt to go about their business. Cockroaches interrupt a game of backgammon. Mosquitos prevent Kogachi from getting to sleep. Sandhoppers bug her while she sunbathes. The situations are real world, and all too relatable, but they also refer to feelings of frustration and angst in general. The critters become figures for the pervasive upset provoked by individual and community disputes alike. Anxieties, like mosquitos, can keep one up at night.

Claudia Kogachi was born in Awaji-shima, Japan, in 1995. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts. In 2019, she won the New Zealand Painting and Printmaking Award. Recent exhibitions include: New Artists Show 2020, Artspace Aotearoa, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland; Obaachan during the lockdown, Wahiawā, Hawaiʻi, Te Tuhi, Tāmaki Makaurau; Uncle Gagi, play_station, Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington; and Everyone Has a Horse Phase, Sanderson Contemporary, Tāmaki Makaurau (all 2020)