SAKURA • QUILALA exhibition opening ceremony and book launch party
SAKURA • QUILALA
Kanako Nishi 西加奈子’s book launch party and exhibition
Curated by Allison Markin Powell
Exhibition on view 4/11 2-9PM
Opening ceremony and book Launch Party 6-9PM
Accent Sisters, STE#702, 89 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York
Join us for an intimate evening celebrating SAKURA • QUILALA, an exhibition and book launch for acclaimed Japanese writer and artist Kanako Nishi. There will also be a music performance, drinks and light refreshment.
SAKURA（published by @harpercollins), is the English-language debut from Kanako Nishi, one of Japan’s most acclaimed writers.
After two years of silence, Kaoru returns home for a tense New Year reunion that slowly uncovers the buried secrets and lingering wounds of the Hasegawa family. At the center of it all is their aging dog Sakura—the quiet bond holding the fractured family together.
Kanako Nishi transforms images from her books into art using simple materials found in everyday life, such as cardboard and crayons. Her work has adorned the covers of most of her books and these images offer another window into the themes she explores in her writing.
The use of cardboard and crayons (Cray-Pas) is an example of mottainai (もったいない), a Japanese aversion to waste that elevates objects beyond their intrinsic value and purpose, as well as wabi-sabi (侘び寂び), an aesthetic sense that finds beauty in things that are imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.
Most of the works included in SAKURA • QUILALA are part of a series created for the literary magazine Qui la la (きらら), featured on the covers. The work “a tree with boobs,” shown here for the first time, is an interactive piece in which gallery visitors are invited to arrange “boobs” on the tree and photograph or share their version, however they like.
Kanako Nishi was born in Tehran, Iran, and grew up in Osaka, Japan and Cairo, Egypt. Sakura, her debut novel, was published in Japan in 2005 and remains a beloved and longtime bestseller. She has won numerous literary awards, including the Naoki Prize and Yomiuri Prize for Literature, and several of her books have been made into films. A versatile writer and artist, her drawings adorn the covers of many of her novels, her memoir, short story and essay collections, and she has written and illustrated several children’s books.
Allison Markin Powell is a literary translator, editor, and publishing consultant. She received the 2020 PEN America Translation Prize for The Ten Loves of Nishino by Hiromi Kawakami and a Pushcart Prize for her translation of Kanako Nishi’s short story, “My Ass.” Her other translations and co-translations include works by Osamu Dazai, Shiori Ito, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, and Kaoru Takamura.