Oshirasama

Oshirasama is a household deity central to the folk religion of the Tōhoku region, particularly Iwate, where Ozaki studied at Iwate University in Morioka; the kami is associated with silkworms, horses, and household-scale women's rituals, traditionally embodied in paired wooden dolls dressed in layered cloth. Ozaki's treatment translates this rural Tōhoku referent into his characteristic register — a stencil-applied acrylic image on canvas, derived from a computer-generated preliminary sketch, executed in flat colour with hard edges and no human figure. Whether the painting depicts a shrine outbuilding, a domestic interior, or a contemporary structure that bears the deity's name, the image holds the folk association at one remove, mediated through the same deadpan suburban idiom he applies elsewhere to drive-throughs and apartment blocks. The work makes explicit the regional Tōhoku frame implicit elsewhere in his practice. His selection for the 3rd PATinKyoto Print Art Triennale 2022 brought work of this kind to wider critical attention, positioning his stencil-on-canvas method within contemporary Japanese print discourse.