Plush is a texture that is both soft yet firm — it is able to absorb trauma and mend itself back into shape. Fuko imagines our hearts and emotional capacities to have the same visceral effect of being bruised and healed like plush. In her drawings, she portrays naked, vulnerable creatures called fumblys in its plushy ecosystem. fumblys fill their infinite ecosystem with plush to save themselves from the collapse, fall, and heartache they experience from living among themselves.
In the series of drawings soft armour, Fuko reimagine her fumblys as strong, dense, soft warriors by dressing them in garments designed by Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons. Kawakubo’s work explores the nuanced spectrum of gender and emotional sensations through her fabrications. As the artist researched more about Rei Kawakubo’s work and her ideologies to resemble feelings and sensations that exist on a broad spectrum, the more she saw a connection to her interest in re-imagining social structures and standards as being more malleable and forgiving. Fuko sees Kawakubo’s respective collection of garments become its own world where the inhabitants are adorned and protected by the abundant, vibrant, playful, soft shields that are able to fight off social norms and binary standards of thinking, feeling, and living.
