Why Gen Zs are drawn to the art of Yoshitomo Nara — and how an LA show is deepening their bond

Within my social media timelines I can’t seem to escape this big-headed girl with a cherubic face.

I’m talking about Yoshitomo Nara’s new paintings currently on display at the Hammer Museum’s group exhibition "Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice." I am in good company with my generation of fellow zoomers.

As with so many things, our introduction to Nara came from the glow of our screens.

“These girls have a very blank face and their image is a depiction of how I'm feeling sometimes, innocence with subtle hints of rebellion or anger,” said Morgan Fu, a sophomore at UCLA, who discovered Nara’s work on Instagram.

She’s since built a social media community of “mutuals”, a follow-for-follow type of friendship, around his art that’s centered around the familiar face of Nara’s recurring girl character.

As Fu dove deeper into the artist’s work, she found there was more to these paintings than meets the eyes — especially with the climate change theme of the Hammer exhibit.

“I thought [that] was pretty inspiring because he has such a large audience of Gen Z and younger people, it’s cool for him as an artist to spread a sort of awareness,” Fu said.

Mika Yoshitake, the exhibit's guest co-curator, said Nara’s work is often misunderstood as part of the neo pop movement, whose leading figure Takashi Murakami similarly uses manga and anime in his work, and is also a contemporary of Nara.

“As far as Nara goes though, he’s drawn not necessarily to the pop imagery that most people associate, but he draws with emotion from his personal life history,” said Yoshitake, noting that the work in “Breath(e)” is Nara’s first to directly tackle climate change. “To me, this feeling of solitude or isolation really reaches out to those people — especially young people who are going through a hard time on a very deep, deep emotional level. That's why he's so popular and loved.”

At the Hammer

The paintings at this exhibit garnering the most online traction in TikToks and IG posts are a diptych called “A Sinking Island Floating in a Sea Called Space,” commissioned specifically for Breath(e).

“It definitely speaks to that idea of slow violence and invisibility in how we perceive climate change,” Yoshitake said. “They’re not cute necessarily, but more driven by these existential feelings of an imperceptible burden that we don’t see in our day to day lives.”

What caught my eye, however, was the third portrait “School Strike for Climate.” Depicting Greta Thunberg; it hung noticeably lower at 3 feet above the ground.

"School Strike for Climate" (right) hangs lower at 3 ft. intentionally to speak to the youth as a central theme of Breath(e).

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Courtesy Hammer Museum

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According to Yoshitake, this was one of the many deliberate efforts in the show’s theme to speak to the youth and empower its voice. The task of "Breath(e)" was to curate a show around climate change in the face of 2020’s peak events — the pandemic-related lockdown, the rise of anti Asian hate, and Black Lives Matter. The exhibit also builds onto Nara’s enduring connection to Los Angeles, the city was home to his first solo gallery show in the United States in the mid 90s.

More than what meets the eye

For Vivienne Tran, a 22-year-old design student at USC, Nara’s imagery is a window into our generation’s inner turmoil as we grapple with social issues like climate change. She said in Nara’s world, the girl seems fully aware of her independence and surroundings — whether she’s depicted as playing with fire or holding knives — despite her adolescence.

Tran discovered Nara’s work on Tumblr during the pandemic, when quarantine led many to find connections, inspirations and collectivism online.

“Social media is so good at making algorithms…being spread at such a fast pace,” Tran said. “It's made our generation more self-aware of where we are politically and socially.”

USC student Yoon Lee poses between Nara's diptych "A Sinking Island Floating in a Sea Called Space" at the Hammer.

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Courtesy Yoon Lee

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“Gen Z and younger audiences are so eager to let others know what they're interested in online,” said 21-year old Lina Jeong, who went to the show in October after seeing the Hammer exhibit on her timelines.

Yoon Lee, a sophomore at USC, has been a Nara fan since 2018. The Hammer show was the first time she’s seen his work in person. She left the show “obsessed” and wanting to dive deeper.

“It does something writing cannot do,” said Lee, who is on staff for the school’s newspaper. “People are able to physically and emotionally connect their memory to the piece that resembles its world…This girl reminds me of my childhood and it’s my Instagram profile picture now.”