Fuko Ito

My work imagines a soft, empathetic, alternate universe inhabited by a community of naked, plushy creatures called fumblys. As I observe my own interactions with people and environments, digesting the social, political, and cultural climate of our time, and looking back to historical tragedies and precedents of mistreatment of each other, I try to make sense of how we can collectively learn to nurture empathy. Through my image making process in drawing and printmaking, I attempt to understand how personal and collective conflicts arise and the ways in which we learn to cope, mend, and forgive each other. I am driven to make work by imagining a world that is softer and more forgiving, as I reflect on the social implications and struggles of living among a community of emotional beings.

I invented my own creatures called fumblys that live collectively in its plushy ecosystem. Their cloudy environment is vaporous, transient, and placeless. fumblys come in different sizes, shapes, and color; some disfigured and disembodied. They have no sense of smell or vision, but only the touch and temperature of each other’s bodies. They are soft, naked, raw, and vulnerable as well as playful, melancholic, and clumsy. They learn to live collectively among family, friends, and romantic partners and these relationships range from parasitic to nurturing ones.

http://www.fuko-ito.com/