Zoé Blue M.’s Folk Figures: Between Mahjong Tiles and Myth

For many painters, the magic happens in the distortion, the taking of daily life and bending it into something stranger, more magnetic. Zoé Blue M. does just that. Her paintings slip between bathhouses with ping-pong tables at their core, and tattooed spirits whose hair gleams pink against the dark. They feel like fragments of a memory you’re trying to hold onto, half-remembered, half-invented—works in which cultural hybridity becomes both subject and method, a way of recombining references until they feel uncanny yet inevitable.

These worlds arrive to her in flashes, and she builds around them, layering the ordinary with something off-kilter. Following her recent show at Jeffrey Deitch art gallery and her ongoing exploration of cultural hybridity, Blue M. talks with hube on loud gallery openings, the satisfying clack of Mahjong tiles, and the parallel life she imagined for herself if painting had never taken over.

hube: You were born in France but are Japanese-American. In what ways does your sense of place, heritage, or cultural hybridity influence your creative process and the stories you choose to tell?

Zoé Blue M.: I was born in Toulon, France to a Japanese-American mother and a Marseillais father. La Provence and Los Angeles both run through my blood in equal measure. I don’t try to consider each part as categorically separate entity of myself since both are deeply mixed together through my upbringing and my visual landscapes. Japan and France have a rich and complicated history of mutual appreciation, influencing each other through painting, fashion, and food. When I add in my own personal ingredient of the Japanese-American experience on the West Coast, I end up with a plethora of information to dance through. My cultural hybridity is a natural stepping stone for me into my paintings, history and folklore being the place I really like to reside; and it’s not just written history, but also that of brush marks, patterns, design, film — you name it.

h: Having studied at both RISD and UCLA, how did those different contexts shape your artistic voice? Were there unexpected lessons you carried from each into your practice today?

ZBM: Both of my schooling experiences were hugely influential to how I make! I would even say I was shaped through experiences far before that. My mother encouraged me from a young age to be myself in the most creative ways possible. I had a teacher in high school who let me sit around crying and drawing as a young sad teen. Every step of the way I was shown that I could at least make something. It took me a few years of painting in my studio apartment with three friends before I decided to go to RISD which threw my work ethic into overdrive. I loved it there, it was tough, and I got to be the craziest version of myself. The ultimate lesson that I got out of that experience was that if you think of something you want to make, against all odds and no matter how hard, you can almost always pull it off. UCLA came soon after that, and the pace was slower and more intentional. It was, like all experiences, what you make of it. My mentors at UCLA were phenomenal, each pushed me in a different way resulting in fantastic shifts in my mode of making. I walked away from there knowing to never (ever!) stop pushing, learning to shift my ways of thinking/making, questioning simple things like “why do I always do that stroke in that way?”

h: When painting, how do you navigate between the personal and the universal? Are there recurring memories, feelings, or symbols from your own life that continually resurface in your work?

ZBM: The personal is universal! We’re often each being placed in these categories, like female painters, and Asian painters, shunting the ability for connection beyond such limiting boxes. The deeply personal, whether it be identity, loss, craft, fear, love (or all wrapped into one) are such easily universally understood notions. I find the more beautifully specific an artist gets, it invites curiosity and education. I don’t believe each painting I make to exist outside of the whole that is everything I’ve made and will make. Memories that were called to make a painting ten years ago will find themselves in a painting I will make tomorrow.

h: With Mahjong Mistress, you’ve created a space that blends community, performance, and play. What does curating social experiences teach you about painting, and vice versa?

ZBM: Painting and exhibiting should always be considered under creating social experiences. As an artist you hope that people will come and connect. The amazing thing about my show in New York with Jeffrey Deitch was doing a Mahjong Mistress event in the gallery space. We got to see people of all types come and play mahjong within the walls of the gallery. Seeing people, old and young, eat dumplings and yell “pong!” while listening to the sounds of tiles being shuffled was something that I’ll always cherish.

h: Your recent show, Hard Boiled, at Jeffrey Deitch art gallery just closed in New York. Beyond the exhibition itself, what conversations or reactions from the audience stayed with you most?

ZBM: Similarly to my answer to the last question, I created a ping pong table that sat in the middle of the gallery. Visitors were encouraged to play resulting in a stunning activation of the paintings. When walking into the gallery I was often met with the visual of people running around similarly to the paintings surrounding them. Exhibits are often a quiet experience during their run time, and having a show where there were sounds of the balls bouncing, people laughing, and asking strangers to play was really invigorating for me.

h: The figures in your paintings often feel both intimate and archetypal. Are they rooted in portraits of real people, composites, or entirely imagined presences?

ZBM: I often say that the figures in my paintings are an amalgamation of many people I know. They have pieces of myself, my family, and folkloric characters that have appeared throughout time. Since the figures are often similar looking I see them as many versions of the same person moving through a period of time or variations of different people.

h: When beginning a new series, what sparks the first image? And what atmosphere fills your studio at that stage?

ZBM: A new piece usually comes to me suddenly. I can either see something that sparks that feeling or a memory floats through my mind leaving images in its wake. I tend to think of one major story at a time. My last show was all about bathhouses that had table tennis in them. I thought about those spaces for years before the show came together. More recently I have been studying methods of mourning and ritualistic practices of paying respect. Spaces from previous bodies of work can always appear in each subsequent body but my thoughts about them shift. In the past I would often move through older children’s tales or women depicted throughout folklore and plays. Everything feels connected, and by the time I finish painting about one thing it simultaneously feels as though I have barely scratched the surface.

h: Prints and patterns are a striking element of your visual language. Do you see them as aesthetic devices, carriers of cultural meaning, or both?

ZBM: All patterns are carriers of cultural meaning. You could spend your whole life learning about patterns moving throughout history and places. Each version of something has passed through someone’s hands, and if they pass through mine, they’ll hopefully end up in someone else’s.

h: If someone walks away from your exhibition with just one lingering thought or feeling, what would you hope it to be?

ZBM: If someone walks away from my exhibition with a lingering thought or feeling, that would be enough for me. I hope the paintings stay with you.

h: If painting were not your medium, where do you imagine your creative energy would flow instead?

ZBM: I’ve recently been gardening and wow there is nothing more phenomenal than growing something out of the earth beneath your feet!