A Space of Your Own features an altered version of an advertisement from the pages of the iconic IKEA store catalogue. Kota Ezawa distilled the scene by transforming the photo into a cartoon, simplifying the image while enhancing its emotional content. He has quietly removed the advertising context of the page to reveal how contemporary Americans envision themselves living and how they use products to face daily challenges.

In his wide-ranging practice, Ezawa converts found moving and still imagery into highly stylized reproductions in a variety of mediums. Using digital drawing, painting, and animation software, Ezawa works frame by frame with narrative passages from television, cinema, and other sources. He then recreates this original material utilizing a simply-rendered, flat visual language, which estranges it from the source material. These works thus reveal the powerful construction of historical memory through mass media imagery.

Label from Kota Ezawa: REDRAWN, October 4, 2013–January 19, 2014