With a background in interior design, architecture, and custom furniture design and development, Brooklyn-based artist Yuko Nishikawa experiments with ceramic, paper pulp, and wire to create dynamic, material-forward hanging sculptures. After establishing a dedicated practice in 2018, her early sculptures primarily made use of ceramic before pivoting toward mediums that privilege acts of making and material transformation, explore space, and elicit physical interaction.

Born in Sendai and raised in Chigaseki, Japan, Yuko’s relationship to creativity began early in her life. Surrounded by the hand-made objects in her childhood home, she spent her early years painting, shaping pottery, and playing music on the piano and violin. “If I wanted something, my first instinct had been to make them myself instead of obtaining things that are already made,” she recalled. “My favorite toys were zippers and scissors. I was amazed by the way objects separate and come together again.”

That early fascination with creative acts eventually led to formal studies in interior design and fifteen years working within architectural firms and a high-end furniture company designing furniture and luminaires alongside master artisans across glassblowing, cabinetry, and upholstery. During these years Yuko felt urgent to make work of her own. Today, Nishikawa’s work is centered around physical engagement with raw, honest materials.

This approach extends to every material in her studio. In contrast to the weighty ceramic forms, she began salvaging discarded or donated photo-background paper from artists and photographers in her studio building. By processing this paper with bookbinder’s glue, Yuko creates her own “clay” to form the cookies that comprise her hanging mobile sculptures. Lightweight, air-dry, and durable, these cookies hang in delicate balance from their wire armature, responding to the movement of air and breezes in their environment.

These cookies derive their color entirely from the raw source material, the colored paper she has collected, valuing the natural integrity of her medium over an additive or foreign coloring process.

When asked what influences her work Yuko responded, “I am interested in how our physical interaction with objects and surroundings influence our emotions and senses. I am interested in the relationship between the objects and us, who see and hold them, and the way objects create structures and an environment. She hopes her work “brings joy, a sense of wonder, and a sense of calm through gentle motions” to anyone who encounters it.