Hikikomori

Hikikomori is a Japanese term for prolonged social withdrawal. For some, it means rarely leaving home for years. In the watercolor that began Cosas Simples, the objects around a seated man offer familiarity and company. The room becomes both refuge and confinement, shaped by attachments to things and by the pressures of life outside.

The crowded interior distinguishes this opening work from the isolated objects and figures that follow. Here, belongings form an entire environment around a person: they provide a familiar material world while also occupying the space of daily life. This relationship between people and the things they live with introduces the series’ attention to objects as carriers of memory, attachment and imagined experience.