Strange is the work and world of Tokyo-based artist Yuka Hirac. Like a dream, her images pull you into another dimension: surreal, overstimulating, and symptomatic of an artificial, digital age. Showing flashes of reality, they strike a balance between the familiar and enigmatic, recognisable yet unsettling. “I try to find something strange and interesting in the real world, and find that delicate balance that makes people imagine something. A hidden story,” the artist describes.
Hirac’s style, which often features distorted faces and bodies, can be traced to her background as a makeup artist. After studying in London and finding commercial success in Tokyo, her present work is less restricted by genre and instead follows the instinctive path of her own fetishes. “Now, I’m making books to record things I like. I’m not only interested in visual aspects but words and stories,” she says. “I want to explore my subconscious and instincts more.”
jajaja… mediation walk is Hirac’s fourth and most recent photobook, released on April 18. “It’s said that when a person dies, they look back on their life like a revolving lantern,” she describes. “I imagined the life I would look back on and realised I laughed a lot. But when I’m laughing with someone, sometimes it’s genuine and sometimes it’s fake…” This mystification bleeds into Hirac’s images, a maximalist kaleidoscope of extreme close-ups, VHS stills, plastic textures and stream of consciousness text.
Using high-contrast colours and flash photography, Hirac’s questions aren’t phrased in words but via visual confusion. With her internet surrealism, she taps into the inexplicable, unnerving parts of the world and self that we don’t, and will likely never, know.
