(Credits: Far Out / Papas Maze)
In 2013, somewhere in Japan, a young girl discovered a cob-webbed scroll, tucked away in her attic. The contents inside was a drawing of an intricate maze, meticulously drawn and hidden by her father 30 years ago.
The girl only knew her father as a meek university janitor, but the paper in front of her revealed something else. It was a simple A1 white sheet of paper filled to the margins with fine pencil drawings of twisting and crossing paths. The monochromatic nature of the page makes it dizzying to look at, and it’s quite literally easy to get lost between the lines.
Her father, Kazou Namura, had spent nights filling in small portions of a sprawling labyrinth for almost a decade.
What was the story behind Namura’s painstaking passion project? Was it a gift for his daughter he had forgotten about? Was it a relaxing activity to do after a long day’s work? Or was he ashamed of some kind of obsession with mazes? Who knows.
No matter what, the secret life of this maze ended here. Namura’s daughter confronted her father, urging him to answer her questions, and in the hopes of attempting to resolve this impossible puzzle, she posted a photo on Twitter as a cry for help.
In no time, Nomura’s work went viral, with people across the world attempting to resolve the puzzle in the post’s comments and on Reddit pages. Namura’s new fandom wanted more mazes to decode, so, upon popular demand, he made another two years later, this time with clearer and larger paths, in the hopes that it would be quicker for people to complete. Papa’s Maze 2.0 was actually harder, according to the people who attempted this impossible cartographic mission.
Now there’s a third version, and they’re all available to buy for £40 online, handmade, and shipped from Japan. However, the question of the purpose of this maze still remains.
One can argue that it is a piece of art because of the maker’s skill, the production process, and the market around it. But it raises the question of what if Nomura’s daughter hadn’t found it. The piece may have stayed hidden forever, with no real intention of it reaching the hands of anybody or adorning the walls of a gallery, in the way we conventionally expect art to be presented.
Thus, Nomura’s maze can be considered an example of Outside Art: art made by conventionally deemed “non-artists” with no financial incentive or ambitions. When we think of Outside Art, it’s usually in reference to children, psychiatric patients, or incarcerated people who operate outside of the conventional structures of art-making, free from societal constraints.
Jean Dubuffet, a French painter and art critic of the 20th century, coined the term ‘Art Brut’ to label these kinds of art works. He said these made him feel “more alive and passionate than any of the boring art that has been officially catalogued”.
But does the labelling of Outsider art defeat the very purpose of integrating, legitimising and recognising these artists? Does it fetishise “otherness” in a Saidian way? Just like with the maze, I’ll leave it to you to figure out.
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