Hichiko Happo

Hichiko Happo was created during a performance of Action Painting, a series that she began in 2011 and staged during her retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao on March 12, 2014. Comprised of nine large-scale canvases placed adjacent on a wall in an auditorium, the artist wrote the phrase “seven happinesses and eight treasures” in Japanese across the canvases using a large brush and sumi ink. The expression stems from a tale Ono heard as a child about Yamanaka Shikanosuke, a Japanese samurai who vows to endure “seven misfortunes and eight sufferings” in order to spare the people of his city from misery. Impressed by this story, Ono decided to reverse the saying by adding positive words and applying them to her own life experience. By using sumi ink, Ono also alludes to the ancient tradition of Japanese painting and calligraphy. As she performs her Action Paintings internationally, each version develops distinct visual qualities, thereby making each set of canvasses unique.