In Aya Takano visual musings of extraordinary imaginary capacity, she seeks to reinvent and reclaim the highly gendered otaku culture (geek culture) through a feminine perspective. Drawing from the concepts of escapism and fantasy in shojo manga (girls comics) that derived in the uncertain post-World War II era of the 1970s, Takano´s images establish a kind of psychological sanctuary for her audience to surpass the "gravity" of social constraints by employing vaguely familiar but distant settings, all of which are transmuted into her delicately painted and vividly coloured canvases.

In Country of Turkey, three young girls are on a road trip. The excavated white pillars behind them are reminiscen...