Upon visiting the Portland Japanese Garden two and a half years ago, Naoko Fukumaru knew that it was the perfect place for her first solo show in the United States. This certainty may seem out of place for another artist, or maybe aspirational for another venue. For Fukumaru, it is just another installment in a hard-won but ultimately serendipitous and inspiring journey. Kintsugi: The Restorative Art of Naoko Fukumaru opened on September 28th and will be on view at the Portland Japanese Garden through January 27, 2025. 

Fukumaru was born into the fourth generation of a family with an antiquities auction house in Kyoto, Japan. She left Japan at the age of 19, in no small part because of cultural expectations around gender and value and who should work in the family business (her brother). She became a master conservator, practicing Western conservation techniques aimed at hiding any evidence of intervention. She repaired old things to look like they were new things, unmarred by time or damage, for illustrious institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Detroit Institute of Arts Museum.

Perhaps the most serendipitous turn in the story was a misunderstanding, one that notably for the story was rooted in a cultural assumption. In the midst of an acrimonious divorce, Fukumaru received an email from a local potter apologizing for missing her kintsugi workshop and asking if he could sign up for the next one. Kintsugi is a Japanese restoration practice in which repairs are done with urushi lacquer dusted with gold. Rather than the repair looking like new, it is highlighted with golden tracery or chips. The problem was that, though she was born in Japan, Fukumaru didn’t have any kintsugi workshops. In fact, she didn’t practice kintsugi at all.  

After leaving Japan at age 19, Fukumaru made a career out of carefully hiding flaws, imperfections, and repairs in ceramic and other art objects: a “leave no trace” ethos. Kintsugi highlights repairs in gold; the trace is the point. In an interview, Fukumaru described kintsugi as “totally the opposite, it’s not a conservation”; she resisted it for 20 years. But this potter wanted a workshop and she was at an unimaginably low point in her life, staying at a women’s shelter with her two daughters after leaving a domestic violence home situation. She didn’t know kintsugi but as a ceramic conservator from Japan, she knew she was well-equipped to learn. So she asked her father to send her some books and got to work. 

It changed her life. She explains kintsugi philosophy as “embracing imperfection, impermanence, and the incompleteness of life.”

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Bowls and cups are the first thing most viewers to the exhibit will encounter, which makes sense as they are the most traditionally associated with kintsugi, a practice which emerged, according to Fukumaru, about 500 years ago as a way to repair objects associated with Japanese tea ceremonies. Kintsugi reflects the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi, here most relevantly described as the appreciation of age as attached to the larger conceptualization of the impermanence of the physical world. 

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Many artists practice kintsugi. A twist in Fukumaru’s practice is that she uses the technique to repair not only Japanese objects but also applies the technique to non-Japanese objects in need of repair. The show includes antiques from ancient Rome, pre-Columbian Costa Rica, ancient Egypt, and Persia, among others. Fukumaru’s family ties to an auction house affords her access to these types of artifacts. Repair or conservation is a normal practice; making the repairs visible is not. Isis – Goddess of Healing and Wisdom has gold tracery at the figure’s elbow, shoulder, and crown of the head as well as at the figurine’s base. 

In making repairs to antiquities, Fukumaru is careful to ensure that her interventions are reversible. Traditional kintsugi practice uses a particular type of dark sap called urushi as the binder between pieces to which the gold dust is then applied. With these works, Fukumaru instead uses a conservator’s resin. Not only does this eliminate the risk of staining the uneven and delicate edges of the breaks, it can also be dissolved with humidity if need be.

Fukumaru stressed this reversibility as central to her practice, perhaps wary of the accusation that she is engaged in an atypical variation of cultural appropriation. I see the distinction as important – part of a “do no harm” ethos – but also am perplexed as to what is possibly being appropriated. Fukumaru isn’t claiming Egyptian or Roman or Persian culture as her own, but instead offers these objects as beautiful and worthy of attention. They would not be on display in a broken state. The repairs have a generosity to them; the kintsugi augments rather than detracts, and her interventions allow for the objects to be appreciated for layers of craftsmanship. Viewers understand the objects’ original circumstances of making and their extended lifespan as well as Fukumaru’s skillful repairs. 

The 2023 work Dreaming in the Blue is an excellent example of this. Fukumaru’s instinct for artistry is on full display here. There’s an impressive balance between what is repaired and what is left unadorned. The plate, identified as “Kashan Persian earthenware, ca 11th- mid 14th c,” is a mottled aqua blue with black motifs at the center and around the edge of the rim. The plate was clearly in multiple pieces with multiple pits, cracks and missing pieces. In this and many other works, Fukumaru employs a second lacquer duration technique that has the appearance of glass but is layered in such a way that it creates a marbled appearance. The lacquer portions are slightly darker in hue than the original plate, and gold traces frame each of the additions. Fukumaru, however, chose to leave two larger triangular holes. The balance emphasizes both the composition of the gold tracery and demonstrates a respect for the age of the original object.

Part of Fukumaru’s skill is knowing the appropriate intervention – how to honor the original object with additions appropriate to the composition of the original work. Fukumaru isn’t just repairing cracks and imperfections, she is making a host of choices as to what to repair, where, and how. Leaving the two triangular gaps in Dreaming in the Blue is a good example of this, as is Waken, in which the lacquer repairs are made in both a deep red and a beige color. The distribution of the two colors is so in line with the original composition that it’s easy not to notice the balance between the colors. It isn’t as though the color used matches the original – in places it is a closer match (the red on the face of the llama) but in others (the beige in the red field of the rim) the color could be disruptive but is not. There is deep integrity to the interventions. 

In speaking with the artist, I appreciate the resonance of the Born This Way series. Understanding that resonance, however, required some additional explanation about ceramic production and the artist’s personal history that wasn’t readily apparent in the exhibition.  

The inspiration for Born This Way directly relates to the artist’s childhood in Japan but also echoes other installation projects and the landscape of her adopted home in Vancouver, British Columbia. Traditional Japanese culture values male children, particularly for family business. Fukumaru recounts a story from her grandmother: On the day she was born her family came to the hospital and all left when they discovered she was a girl. They wanted a boy. Fukumaru’s brother was born six years later but she “grew up with frustration and conflict with my mother because she provided much more love and care to my brother.”  

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This familial rejection drew Fukumaru to ceramic objects that were deformed or broken in the firing process. Mishaps in the firing process are commonplace; only 70-80% of ceramics that go into the kiln emerge from the kiln as intended. Malformed objects are discarded by the potter and traditionally buried. In 2021, Fukumaru collaborated with two retired Canadian ceramicists  – Heinz Laffin (1923-2023) and Michael Henry (b. 1939) – to excavate and create an installation from their kiln rejection piles. The show at the Richmond Art Gallery featured a circular display pile of the rejected works ringed with works repaired by Fukumaru on pedestals.

The objects in Born this Way are ceramics not from local Canadian kilns but from Imari, Japan. The city, located in the Saga Prefecture on the island of Kyushu, has a four-century tradition of porcelain making. Fukumaru’s younger brother was able to connect her with an antique dealer who specializes in ceramics excavated from old Imari kilns. In the works on display at the Portland Japanese Garden, the ceramics from Imari date from between 1820 and 1860. 

The shapes and conditions of the ceramics vary: Some bowls are only partial, others are broken with gold-traced repairs, and still others seem to fold in upon themselves, misshapen to the extent that they can’t fulfill their intended purpose as vessels. Some are affixed to pieces of driftwood while others are balanced on or leaning on red clay posts that Fukumaru identified as kiln furniture, the posts that support the shelves inside the kiln. 

While I see the logic of the kiln furniture juxtaposition, the intention of the series is better served by the driftwood. Fukumaru collected the driftwood from her studio in a remote area of Vancouver Island. It’s weathered and has clearly been shaped by natural elements, forces beyond human control. The porcelain cups and bowls are made by human hands but then broken, in a process required to finish them. The kiln isn’t optional, but its process is capricious and it isn’t always clear why an object becomes damaged. Fukumaru uses the natural shape of the driftwood, in conjunction with the kintsugi-repaired ceramics, to underscore the natural, if unexpected, beauty. 

There are a series of what could be seen as contradictions in Fukumaru’s work. Kintsugi is a Japanese practice, but Fukumaru came to the practice after leaving Japan and creating her career in Western conservation. She had to leave Japan in order to practice kintsugi. Her draw to misshapen ceramics was precipitated by feeling unwanted by her family, but her access to the ceramics and to many of the other antique objects that she works with is provided by her family through their auction house. Even Fukumaru’s initial knowledge base about kintsugi was facilitated by books sent from Japan by her father. The contradictions mirror the truth at the heart of kintsugi: something has to be broken in order to be repaired.

These contradictions also parallel what makes the Portland Japanese Garden a perfect venue for Fukumaru’s work. It was founded after World War II – after the United States had put citizens of Japanese-origin U.S. citizens in camps and ultimately dropped two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki – with the express aim of community healing. It’s a beautiful place; the catalyst for its creation was anything but. Fukumaru references the “authenticity and magic” of the place as well as the realization that “care and love are the main ingredients.” 

Fukumaru may have known two years ago that the Portland Japanese Garden was the right venue for her first show in the United States, but even in those two years, she has become a more confident artist. In fact, one of the joys of this show is to witness Fukumaru’s development. She may have 25 years of conservation experience, but her independent practice is still in its nascent stages. The earliest works in the show are from only five years ago, in 2019: Red Moon on Line and Ocean Scars. Red Moon is a late Qing Dynasty plate, but the repair is a single thread of gold – and therefore, presumably, a straightforward repair – two pieces united back into one. On Ocean Scars, a repair of a sea urchin shell, the missing parts are substituted by a delicate web of red thread. The early steps are tentative. 

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Fukumaru’s more recent work clearly announces a new sense of self-assuredness as an independent artist. In Persian Jug, the missing portions of the original antique are created, not out of a substance that mimics the original and blends in, but one that expressly stands out, an explosion of hexagonal protrusions made out of plaster. A Western approach to conservation would hide the brokenness, repair the object as though the break had never happened and its value depends on its unscathedness. Instead Fukumaru, taking inspiration from kintsugi and life experience, transforms the brokenness into something not needing to be hidden but beautiful in its own right. The value is equal parts vulnerability and authenticity.

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The exhibition is on view at the Pavilion and Tanabe Galleries at the Portland Japanese Garden. The garden is located at 611 SW Kingston Avenue in Portland and is open Wednesdays through Mondays from 10:00 am until 4:30 pm. Admission for adults is $21.95. Kintsugi: The Restorative Art of Naoko Fukumaru will be on view through January 27, 2025.