Bugeisha

This piece was part of Matsumoto's "Goddesses and Warriors" series, inspired by the "Me Too" Movement. She wanted to paint something that symbolizes courage to celebrate the women and girls speaking up and inspires others to do the same.

From the artist: "I wanted to create culturally diverse figures, and I chose a Japanese female samurai as one of the warrior figures. The model is myself wearing real samurai armor, with the "Great Wave" by Hokusai in the background. I wanted to show courage, fearlessness, calm, poise, attitude, and style with the samurai figure. The big wave symbolizes the source of the threat, a force of nature, pandemic, climate change, political, and social divide. I wrote a haiku poem relating to this painting:

A glimpse of the edge
Untethered from the weight of the past
A dragon awakens"