Sumi Maro (13.09. - 25.10.2003): May I ask you something?

This question finished my first encounter with Sumi Maro at the art fair in Cologne in November 1995. He asked me to cooperate in a performance he made the following day. At that time I did not know that, with this performance, I was going to become his future muse. But shortly afterwards I regretted my quick decision a little bit. Because as a reward for my promise I got a little, blue, wooden box, in which was a photo of an Aoki, wired with strand. By thinking of playing a domina at the show, I became unwell. But today I am thankful that my curiosity and pleasure of getting to know a Japanese artist in person had beaten my doubts. (The part as a domina was very harmless, too.) Definitely I would be poorer in many aspects, had I not met this artist, whom I highly estimate as an artist as well as an extraordinary man.
What does it mean for me today, to appear in the artworks of Sumi Maro? He wrote me once his art never gets real without women. In this way I am proud to take an important part in his artworks. At the same time it is weired to know, that somebody engages with my own person more intensively than I do. While visiting his studio, I saw how Sumi-san works for days, weeks, sometimes even for months on the details of my face. I almost thought he would see through me that way and observe something that I, consciously or unconsciously, try to hide. (The last thing I noticed was when Sumi Maro pointed out that I avoid the direct view into the camera on most of the photographs.) Strange as I hear my voice on the tape-recorder, I often have the feeling that somebody else looks at me out of the pictures. As if this somebody would be my alter ego, whom I do not know myself or who is just visible for others. Sumi Maro`s works, which are for me something between reality and fiction, intimacy and strange-ness, challenge me to ask for my self and to have the courage to recognize myself.
Above my desktop there is a painting, which Sumi Maro once gave to me. If you watch this painting from a distance, you can see my face, but the closer you get to the image, the more it becomes invisi-ble, because of the innumerable fields of color, which dissolve. Today, after almost two years, I can see my face clearly, also when standing close to the painting.
July 1998 Fatiah Bürkner