2018年10月，日本艺术家小岛奈保子的最新手工纸雕作品“Shiro”在泰国曼谷艺术文化中心正式揭幕。这是她首次在泰国开个展，展品是以身长32米的蓝鲸为原型，按照一比一的真实比例创作的，是迄今为止她作品里规模最大的一个。

In October 2018 Nahoko Kojima unveiled her latest handmade Paper Cut Sculpture, ‘Shiro’ at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre in Thailand. This is the artist’s largest piece to date, a life-sized depiction of a 32m Blue Whale and her debut solo show in Thailand. With thousands of daily visitors, the show was hugely popular with Bangkok art lovers.

▼身长32米的“蓝鲸”纸雕，Blue Whale, a  32m handmade Paper Cut Sculpture

从Shiro的概念设计到雕刻完成，小岛奈保子花了将近一年。她在夏威夷的时候看到的蓝鲸，在数月的绘画，以及对蓝鲸的习性与生活环境的研究后，她开始创作她最大的作品。小岛奈保子始终认为，只有按照蓝鲸真实比例来创作，人们才能感受到地球最大的哺乳动物的雄伟。

Shiro took almost a year to create from concept to completion. Kojima saw the animal in Hawaii and after months of drawing and research into the behaviour and environment of the animal she started to draw her largest piece to date. The artist was adamant she wanted to work to actual life scale so that people could experience the true majesty of the largest mammal on the planet.

▼纸雕细部，detailed view

在日语里，Shiro是白色的意思。之所以取名Shiro，是因为当小岛奈保子看到蓝鲸的时候，她认为，蓝鲸实际上是白色的。为了这个作品，小岛奈保子特地在日本造纸厂定制了特大尺寸的日本纸，然后花了两个月来根据图纸来裁切这两大张纸，图纸是她在伦敦市中心的工作室画的。小岛奈保子在裁切的过程中是会修改自己的设计的，这样做的话，仅使用数字和机械绘图就无法创作类似的作品了。她首先对“Shiro”进行了原型设计，然后根据原型设计，用尼龙线把裁切好的纸张串在一起，最终达成了与她的想象一致的形状。和小岛奈保子其他的作品一样，这件作品也是基于她“隐藏之美”的概念，所有的故事和记叙都隐秘地藏于她所描绘的动物的身体之中。

The name Shiro means ‘white’ in Japanese because when she saw the Blue Whale, Kojima thought the the animal actually looked white. Kojima had Japanese Washi paper custom made for her in especially large sizes from a paper mill in Japan and took months to cut the two flat sheets based on her drawings in her Central London studio. Kojima is known to alter the designs as she cuts them, in effect making it impossible to recreate similar works by digitising and mechanising drawings alone. She prototyped Shiro first, using nylon threads to tie the single sheets, eventually arriving at a form that matched her vision. As with all her pieces this artwork is based on the artist’s concept of ‘Hidden Beauty’ with stories and narrative secretly intertwined in the body of the animals she depicts.

为了将展品运到曼谷，小岛奈保子将雕刻好的纸裁成正方形，然后卷好，运输，等到了展场再重新拼接好。小岛奈保子创作的关键在于——她用一整张连续的图来制作纸雕，以沿袭日本剪纸的传统。

In order to ship the work to Bangkok, the artist cut the finished sheet into clean squares which were rolled and then reassembled on site back into a single sheet. The key for Kojima was that the art was made using one continuous drawing in order to maintain a link to traditional Kirie.

▼布展过程，reassemble phase

在日本，小岛奈保子被形容为日本剪纸文化的一股清流，因为她坚持手工制作，并且同一作品绝不做两次。她五岁就开始剪纸，现在正处于创作巅峰期，不知疲倦地发明并拓展剪纸工艺。她作为一名剪纸艺术家，已经在伦敦工作了十几年。小岛奈保子以她首创的纸雕作品而闻名，她的这些作品使日本传统剪纸艺术进入了当代艺术范畴。在许多传统文化里，都能见到剪纸的影子，有时与宗教图腾有关，有时则是其他图案。在日本剪纸艺术文化中，有两条规矩。其一，要在一整张纸上进行裁剪；其二，手工制作。实际上，除了创作风格，研究人员还可以根据裁纸时切痕的差异来辨别不同的艺术家的作品。

Nahoko Kojima has been described as a force of nature in Japanese Kirie, cutting designs by hand and refusing to cut the same thing twice. She has been making paper cut art since the age of five and is now at her creative peak, tirelessly inventing and developing processes, working professionally as a paper cut artist for over a decade in London. She is best known for her pioneering sculptural works that push a traditional Japanese art form of Kirie into the contemporary sphere and her goal is to see it legitimised as an art form in its own right globally. Many cultures have traditions of paper cutting sometimes linked to religious motifs or other symbols. In Japanese Paper Cut, Kirie, there are two very simple rules, firstly to cut from a single sheet of paper and secondly to make work by hand. Researchers can actually tell the difference between the work of different artists based on the strokes of the cuts, not just the drawing style.

▼一整张连续的图纸沿袭了日本剪纸的传统，the art was made using one continuous drawing in order to maintain a link to traditional Kirie