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Amelia Akiko Frank is a Japanese-American artist based between London and New York, whose practice moves between drawing, sculpture and language.
Amelia Akiko Frank is a Japanese-American artist based between London and New York, whose practice moves between drawing, sculpture and language. Her work is grounded in experimentation, in particular exploring the tension between materials, scale and the competing meanings embedded within images.
Frank has been drawing for as long as she can remember, describing it as her primary way of making sense of the world. Drawing for her is less of an activity confined to paper and more a way of thinking through line, form and movement. In her larger drawings, her otherwise intuitive work shifts towards iteration: “Every three lines I make, I have to step back.” What feels immediate at a smaller scale becomes fragmented, requiring constant movement between making and reflecting. Marks are then built gradually through repetition, interruption and adjustment.
Recently, she began working with sculpture, so alongside works on paper, she “draws” in metal by bending it into curved linear forms, or carves drawn gestures into wood. What interests Frank is to explore how materiality changes the nature of her work. A curved line that feels fluid on paper, for example, becomes slower and more resistant when made in metal. She describes this process as involving “a lot more fighting” to achieve a related form. Rather than directly translating an image from one medium to another, she allows weight, scale and physical limitations to alter the work, making these shifts part of the meaning of the piece itself.
Frank’s work brings together images of flowers, war technology and explosive forms. Missiles and diagrams of weaponry often appear side by side with botanical shapes. By placing these images together, Frank explores how very different objects share similar visual structures and how beauty and violence can exist within the same image. She is drawn to images that feel “sticky”, that resist immediate understanding, including forms found in both natural and urban environments, from curved branches to wires and anti-pigeon spikes.
Underlying much of her recent thinking is an interest in expansion as both a productive and destructive force. This tension that runs throughout her work is prevalent in the films of Hayao Miyazaki and his depictions of the “beauty of violent things”. War machines are rendered with care and precision even within anti-war narratives. Frank is interested in similar questions within her own work: how to represent violence or power without simplifying or aestheticising it. Other influences in her work include Lydia Ourahmane’s focus on political and material histories, Lee Bontecou’s fusion of organic and mechanical forms and her peer Seihee Cho’s exploration of tension between fragility and force.
Frank recently completed an MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London, following earlier studies in Visual Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies at University of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including with Norito Gallery in Bangkok. She received the Almacantar Studio Award, which provided her with a year-long studio with Bow Arts. This summer, she will return to New York for the Lower East Side Printshop Summer Keyholder Residency, where she plans to continue developing larger-scale works, experiment with metal casting and expand the role of workshops and conversation within her practice.