Work Text:
A Life in Colour: Claudia Kishi, Volume One
Words by P.K. Subramaniam, photography courtesy of the University of the Arts, London
For Vogue, 7 December 2028
Claudia Kishi, not yet 23, is exhibiting at her old college, Central Saint Martins at Granary Square. The ground floor space is the archetypical white-walled warehouse space, intended for current students and recent graduates exhibiting a degree portfolio or a first collection. The first thing that strikes me on entering is that Kishi, in a manner typical of her work, has drawn inspiration from even this blankness of space. King’s Cross station churns and clanks beneath the stone flagstones and clouds of chiffon steam billow luxuriously along the walls. I want to touch the fabric but worry the delicate embroidery may come apart in my hands.
Despite her sensitivity to the local vibes, Kishi herself is American. “Japanese-American,” she chides me, amused. “A lot happening in that hyphen. And you can see it.”
She gestures around at her work, and of course I can. Some of the pieces on the wall are conventional paintings, paint or watercolour on canvas, but most of them have heavy elements of textile art, quilting squares, wool, thread, rich silk. One piece looks like it took weeks and months of embroidery and then had a passionate burst of paint thrown on it. But a key component of this exuberance of style is Kishi’s language and heritage, and it has clearly been used with precision.
“I can read, like, five kanji,” she says, laughing, as I admire the delicate brushwork and embroidery. “My sister does them for me and I copy them out. She bitches about how I got them all disrespectful and I do them again a bunch of times. It’s our thing.”
You didn’t speak Japanese at home, I say. Kishi shakes her head. “I learned by myself as I got older,” she says. “When I was thirteen, my grandmother died. She was the world to me and I wanted to learn it to honour her, but it’s been an uphill struggle. I think it’s beautiful though. My sister makes fun of me, she says I can read words like ‘dictionary’ and 'ephemerality’ but drop me in Tokyo and I couldn’t ask where the bathroom is. We have different talents.”
*
Grief consumes everything before it like an unquenchable flame. Claudia takes everyone’s advice and faces up to it. She even agrees to see the therapist her parents arrange for, and tries to listen to the stuff he says about how she might manage her feelings. Art therapy, suggests the school counsellor, so Claudia throws paint at canvases like she’s Jackson Pollock or something. It feels silly and performative, not what she would really do.
Mindfulness and meditation, Dawn’s mom says. She means the stuff you get in self-help books, but Mimi taught Claudia how to meditate in the traditional way. The problem is, she wasn’t good at it before and she isn’t going to get any better at it now she doesn’t have Mimi to help her. Claudia lights a candle and tries to empty her mind, but she can’t stop thinking about how she needs to get more junk food and about that math quiz she flunked and about how ‘grandmother just died’ isn’t a permanent excuse for failure. She gives up, feeling like she fails not just at math, but at grief, and at being a granddaughter. It sucks.
The next night she lights the candle again, looks at it and knows she can’t even try. But there’s a pencil right by her hand, so she sketches the candle instead, trying to show how it gutters in the draught from the window and how the centre of the flame is a different colour from the outer edge. Mimi would be okay with that, she decides. Mimi would understand that this, too, has meaning.
And that thing, that attention to fine detail, remains part of Claudia’s style long after that fierce first grief has burnt out. The edges of the candle flame. The precise fall of Stacey’s hair over her shoulders. The snow on the window. And the kanji, painted with the beautiful goat hair brushes Janine gave her, along with a ton of attitude about how she needed to concentrate more if she was ever going to get this right. Claudia does it over and over. She gets it right.
*
The most striking piece in the exhibition is large, circular and studded with cheerful red fabric semicircles and embroidered green florets. I squint it at it for a long time, while the artist laughs alongside me. “Yeah,” she says. “It’s a quiche. Broccoli and tomato. Weirdly pivotal in my life.”
I ask her the question that’s been on my mind ever since I first heard the title of this show. Claudia Kishi, Volume One: in reference to the exhibition itself, likely the first of many in Kishi’s professional career, but also to the artist. An explicit work of autobiography requires confidence at any stage of life. Kishi is doing it at 22, absolutely sure that her life provides adequate raw material for artistic transformation, and also that this is just the first instalment. Does she think that’s unusual for a woman of her age?
“I have important things I need to say,” Kishi says, shrugging. “And if I didn’t think my experience and work had value, I wouldn’t pick up my brush. What would be the point?”
*
Even though they drive her crazy, Claudia loves her parents. They’re strict, but Claudia understands they’re immigrant parents, and what that means. Her home life was never going to be like Stacey’s or Kristy’s; her mom and dad and Mimi all travelled great distances to give her the life she has, and Claudia doesn’t want to change that. She used to imagine being white when she was a little kid, but that was dumb and she’s over it now.
Still. It’s not Rioko and John Kishi she’s going to for help now. They love her, but they don’t understand her. Even Mimi might not have been the right person, not for this. She considers her teachers at school, and rejects them. Not right either. She gives it some more thought, checks the Baby-Sitters Club’ shared calendar to see Mary Anne has a job, crosses the street and knocks.
“Hi, Claudia,” Richard Spier says, opening the door. “Mary Anne is over at the Pikes’, I believe.”
“Actually.” Claudia pauses. This seemed like such a great idea when she was lying in bed last night thinking about it. Now she’s actually doing it, it seems kind of idiotic. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you.”
Richard stares at her for so long she can see the cogs and punch cards in his brain rearrange themselves. Then he steps back, invites her in, and asks her if she wants a drink or something to eat. Claudia says yes, mostly just to stall for time, and tries to pull herself together. But then Richard puts a slice of home-made quiche in front of her, and it’s so delicious it gives her courage. Say what you like about him, Richard Spier is a good cook. And when people come to his door he doesn't turn them away.
“I want to be an artist when I grow up,” Claudia says. “Like, I know I’ve said that since I was in first grade? But I mean it. My mom and dad say I need to do better at school and major in something sensible so I can get a job that pays the rent. And, do the art on the side I guess.”
“They’re not being unreasonable, Claudia,” Richard says gently. “Pursuing art, any form of art, is a notoriously difficult means of achieving a living wage. It doesn’t mean that the art being made isn’t worthwhile.”
Claudia takes a deep breath. “I get that. But I need to be around other artists, I need to learn from the best, or I won’t be my best. I get that maybe I work at Starbucks at the same time and paint nights and weekends. But my art isn’t a side thing. To me it’s the most important thing.”
Richard nods, slowly. “A talent without training is worse than none. That’s not unreasonable, either.”
“Okay.” Claudia lets out the breath. Not unreasonable is good. From Richard that’s practically a ticker tape parade. “Okay.”
Richard hesitates, takes a big bite of quiche, and has to cough into a table napkin before he can continue. “Claudia, not that your company isn’t a pleasure, but why have you come to me with this?”
“Because you know stuff.” Claudia can’t think why he didn’t understand this straight off. “Like, financial aid, loans, scholarships, that kind of stuff. I’m sure Mom and Dad could help with it too but I want to give them a whole plan that I’ve worked out for myself. Uh. With your help.”
“With my help.” Richard looks at his fork like he’s expecting it to say something, then sets it down. “Yes. All right.”
“You mean you’ll help me?”
“Yes.” Richard sighs. “So long as you promise me that when we’re done you’ll go straight to your parents and lay this out to them. No secrets.”
“No secrets,” Claudia agrees. “I can come over this weekend, maybe? I’ve started working on it by myself, I’ll bring everything I’ve done so far.”
“Fine.” Richard looks from the quiche to the ceiling, as though making eye contact will kill him. Claudia can tell he’s forcing words out with great difficulty. “Claudia, I don’t know anything about art. I can’t comment on your talent. But you’ve got a plan and you’re putting the work in, and in my book that’s half the battle.”
No one has ever said anything like that about Claudia before. It makes her feel older, stronger, like she really can do this if she tries. She clasps her hands and says, as a promise: “You are not going to regret this. I’ll bring snacks.”
Richard looks like he’s already regretting it, but he smiles at her and offers her another slice.
*
Other than A Reciprocal Quiche, my favourite piece in the collection is a giant sheet of white fabric, with black x and y axes and a swooping red curve painted across it. “I wasn’t going to exhibit that one,” Kishi says, looking more serious than she has at any other point in this conversation. “It was more like… I don’t know, processing? Me trying to make sense of something that happened. It didn’t feel right to put it on show, it wasn’t my story. But my friend said I had to.”
The axes are unlabelled, so I ask what variable the graph is tracking. Kishi tells me it’s blood sugar.
*
Stacey is here on a Rhodes scholarship, which she’s embarrassed about because it’s so racist. “Not the scholarship,” she says, on her first night in London, in Claudia’s crappy house share in Tufnell Park. “The guy it was named after. He was super racist, even for nineteenth-century white dudes? Like, it didn’t just come naturally, he worked at it.”
“That’s pretty racist,” Claudia says, and then laughs, not because that’s funny but because she’s so happy Stacey is here. This is her year abroad from NYU, and so far it’s been great: she’s learning a lot at Central Saint Martins and she’s making friends. But it’s good to have someone here who just gets her, who knows what she was like in high school and came over with a suitcase full of Twizzlers and Swedish Fish. Stacey has a room in college in Oxford but the lease doesn’t start for another few days, so she’s going to stay on Claudia’s floor in London, and Claudia has a ton of good ideas for how they can spend the time.
It turns out just how she planned. She and Stacey look at clothes they can’t afford in Camden Market, they eat ice-cream in Regent’s Park, they take in a couple of museums. It’s awesome. On Monday, Claudia has class and Stacey wants to check out the bookshops, so they agree to split up for the day and meet for dinner. But when Claudia checks her phone in the morning break, she has a text from Stacey asking her to call.
“Claud, listen,” Stacey says, when she picks up. “My sugar – my sugar’s not good, I don’t know what to do.”
Claudia doesn’t wait. She yells something apologetic at her tutor and runs outside with her phone still in her hand. Stacey managed to tell Claudia where she was before she hung up and Claudia half-walks, half-runs down to Euston, to a café she knows opposite Warren Street. Inside, Stacey is sitting in a booth looking translucently pale and frightened. “If we were home I’d ring my own doctor,” she says as Claudia comes in. “I’d know what to do, but here--”
“It’s fine,” Claudia says. “Don’t worry, it’s gonna be fine.”
She’s been living here for six months now and she knows how the British healthcare system works. Claudia makes a couple of calls and someone gives her advice over the phone. In the end they take a taxi to the hospital at Whipps Cross to get Stacey checked out. Her blood sugar is a little out-of-whack but she’s okay, she’s fine, and after a couple of hours the doctor says Stacey should take it easy for a while but it’s okay for her to go home. On the way back in another taxi Claudia emails her tutor to apologise and orders pizza to arrive at the same time as they do. Stacey is still pale, but she looks much better. Claudia makes her sit down and gets napkins and plates.
“Thanks,” Stacey says, later in the evening, as they’re watching something trashy on Netflix and dipping the last of the pizza crusts in barbecue sauce. “I’m so glad you were here.”
“It was no big deal,” Claudia says. “It’s what friends are for, right?”
She really believes that, as she’s saying it. But when she’s falling asleep that night she realises suddenly that Stacey didn’t know anyone else here, not in this city or this entire country. Back in middle school Claudia babysat for kids a lot, but she was a kid then; she’s twenty-one now and for the first time in her life, she was someone’s first call. Stacey called, and Claudia answered, and without warning, or premonition, this is the day that Claudia’s adult life begins.
*
What next, I ask. Does Claudia Kishi have any other projects in mind?
“Oh, yeah, I’ve got something coming up,” Kishi says. She’s turning away from me as she says it, looking along an open walkway lined with her own work on both sides. She’s wearing jeans and a plain black t-shirt, with an oversized white shirt over it that’s covered with paint, glitter and dirt. It looks cool, artistic, but I can tell that it’s real paint and real dirt. It’s not carefully arranged with an eye to the aesthetic; it’s the debris of whatever she’s working on. It could be anything: quiche, mathematics, Junior Mints.
“It’s going to be incredible,” Kishi says, her eyes on the open plaza, on the next thing. “You’ll see.”