about

Matthew Shoki Tanabe was born in Japan and raised in Oregon, currently living and working in Salem. He received his BFA in painting and creative writing, and his Master's degree in teaching, from Willamette University in Salem, Oregon.

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Tanabe's work responds to the idea that peoples' identities are a synthesis of their memories and environments. The visual representations of memory and environment coincide to construct an ephemeral tapestry meant to represent on one hand the subconscious trappings of awareness and being, and on the other a mapping of the familiar and the unknown. The works' subject matter is often used as metaphor for how a person constructs their identity through introspective and experiential reflection of self-in-the-world. This is conceptually and visually responsive to his own bi-cultural experience of growing up between Japan and The United States, bringing together aspects of both Eastern and Western aesthetic motifs. 

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