Naomi Kasumi

About Naomi

Seattle-based artist, scholar, educator, and designer, Naomi Kasumi, was born and raised in Kyoto, Japan. Kasumi is currently both a Professor of Design and Director of the Design Program. She started teaching at Seattle University in 2003 and established the Digital Design Program. The program is named the Design Program and is situated in the Department of Visual Arts.

Kasumi's work spans various media, both ephemeral and permanent, with recurring themes of "presence and absence," "memory/memorial," and "loss and healing," rooted in her personal experiences of loss and grief, central to her installation art and research. Her primary focus is a memorial series that employs a ritualistic process of repetitive, spontaneous creation of handmade objects. The sheer volume of these small objects underscores the scale, concept, and tangible quality of the work, serving as a therapeutic and redemptive process reflecting personal struggle. Her smaller-scale projects include book art, video, and design.

An internationally active installation artist, Kasumi's solo and group exhibitions span galleries and educational institutions worldwide. In Seattle, her work has been featured at venues such as the Wing Luke Asian Museum, Seattle Art Museum, Olympic Sculpture Park, the Gardner Center for Asian Arts & Ideas, Seattle Center, the University of Washington, and Seattle University, with some pieces housed in University of Washington's and Seattle University's Special Collections.

Her work has also been exhibited in cities across the U.S., including Rochester, Philadelphia, Chicago, Gainesville, Denver, and Anchorage, as well as in Portland and Eugene, Oregon. Internationally, she has exhibited in Verona, Frankfurt, Budapest, Brisbane, Sydney, Hobert (Tasmania), New Delhi, Shanghai, and Belize. In Japan, her exhibitions span Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya, Osaka, Kyoto, Fukushima, Kamaishi, and many other cities.

Kasumi has been invited as an artist-in-residence at the Soji-ji Temple in Yokohama, Japan, where she presented her signature piece "Sarit" (Flow of Compassion) for the 650th anniversary of the temple's second Zen Master. In 2019, she created a large installation for the permanent collection at the Shanghai Institute of Visual Art, focusing on ecological concerns and water pollution. In 2020, she was invited to exhibit in "Make Crises Visible," an activism art and design collection, at the Senckenberg Museum of Natural History in Frankfurt, Germany.

Qualifications

MFA, Visual Design
University of Oregon

BFA, Visual Design
University of Oregon

BA, Social Welfare
Bukkyo University, Kyoto, Japan