Hyphen magazine - Asian American arts, culture, and politics

In Weston Takeshi Teruya’s work, makeshift islands are constructed from objects of the built environment. The markers of borders — fences, cones and barriers — explode and implode on paper as Teruya explores the ways that borders shape spatial narratives, how they define relationships and access. But what Teruya calls drawings are actually intricate pieces crafted from handcut, handdrawn paper. Expanses of white, on closer inspection, are layered with detail.

What drives Teruya to create these spaces of possibility and destruction? Perhaps the signs came early. As a child, born and raised in Honolulu, Teruya would destroy his toys and put them back together again. As an artist, he excises objects from paper and reconstructs landscapes from the signs of social detritus.

In the San Francisco Bay Area artist’s recent installations, his drawings become sculptures and mimic sites of transience. A freeway overpass, a border that carves up space, is joined by Teruya’s meticulous sculpture. His work poses the questions: Who inhabits these lands and who can transgress its borders?