Akino Kondoh’s Dark Drawings and Paintings of Childlike Characters

Cherub-like children with school girl bobs enter infernal abysses and haunted-looking forests in Akino Kondoh’s drawings and paintings. The Japanese artist says she is interested in exploring the eerie feeling of deja vu that childhood memories can sometimes trigger. With their dark mood and enigmatic symbolism, her characters’ surreal adventures evoke the ways our childhood fears and anxieties were once magnified in our nightmares, and perhaps still are.