N412 Nevers
N412 Nevers
2012?-2025 (to be continued)
Mixed media installation: Dried Japanese knotweed, mixed media on wood panels, small booklets made with found papers, archival ink prints, color pencil on mylar, collage on paper, found library catalog card, and found tag
Dimension flexible (shown here as almost 6ft long)
These paintings, drawings, tiny booklets, and some found papers and dried Japanese knotweed have been in my studio for many years, and perhaps decades for some of them. They remained unresolved but I was unable to part with them.
My father passed away in January of 2025. I was back home in Japan for two months from December through February. My mother, sister, and I were able to take care of him at home during the last 21 days of his life. The time we spent with him in those days was intimate and intensely loving, but filled with dread and sadness for what was to come soon—his death (he had pancreatic cancer and decided not to go through any treatment at the age of 88.) He was dying and it was difficult to see him declining. But it was also the happiest time. We danced and sang together with him even though he was bed ridden. We played his favorite tune from Louis Armstrong. He danced with his arms and hands, and we all danced around his bed. He made many jokes which made us laugh hard. He told us how happy he was.
After his death, I often went to the rice paddy fields and looked up the sky to talk to him. Even when I wasn’t by the rice paddy fields, my mind was always on the sky, looking up and searching for something.
After the funeral and taking care of the necessary paperwork for my mother, I returned from Japan. In my studio, still not sure where or how to start anything, I began gathering these unresolved pieces. To this day, I cannot tell you what made me decide to work/rework on them. I reworked on those paintings, made some new drawings, and went through many unresolved pieces I kept in my studio. They all came somewhat naturally, and I began assembling them together. One piece led to another. One day, I found an old library card catalog with the typed text that read N412 Nevers.
It dawn on me that I was making a self-portrait of sort. A self-portrait in the making. The number 412 was a significant number to me because my birthday is 4/12, and my initial N was next to 412. Nevers is a name of the city in central France, but I didn’t know that. I liked it because it sounded like plural of “never.” Like, never never.
This installation will never be complete, I decided. It will always be in the “making.” But after making this itineration in my studio, I packed everything and stored away, and I began a new project.
It took me a year to write about this piece since I made this wall installation.
Naoe Suzuki
March 2026