I’m curious about the origin of your name, which you style as CHiKA.

I just like the way it looks instead of “Chika.” It looks ordered, balanced, and clean. My name in Japanese looks like this: 千加. 千, or “Chi,” means “a thousand.” 加, or “Ka,” means “addition.” But I do not know exactly what they mean together. My parents hired a professional namer, and according to that person this name is supposed to bring me happiness and success. So I like to say that I bring one thousand happinesses to everybody.

That’s great! So this name was arrived at using onomancy, or the idea that one can foretell a child’s life by the name they’re given?

That’s right. In Japan, onomancy is known as seimei handan. It can take several forms, but the most popular is based on the character strokes in the subject’s written name. A person is hired to find the best moniker for a child by calculating the balance of Chinese characters in the first and last name.

What an interesting job. And then of course your name is also a homophone for the Spanish word for “girl.”

Spanish speakers never forget my name! I always enjoy seeing their surprise when they hear it for the first time.

The Platonic solids are the underpinning for the sculptures of GO. Those shapes have been invested with a lot of meaning throughout history. What is their personal significance for you?

I have been practicing Qigong for a decade with the great Grand Master Nan Lu. In Qigong, these shapes are related to the Chinese conception of the five elements found in nature. For me, they connect what we find in nature, the visible, with that which we do not really see, the invisible. I will be gratified if my audience sees this connection in my work.

The five Chinese elements as in water, wood, fire, earth, and metal?

Yes. And in this system, each element corresponds with a direction—south, middle, west, north, and east. The locations of my sculptures were determined this way.

What was it about these sculptures that compelled you to create them virtually rather than physically?

It was an urge I’d never felt before, and it came when we were locked down in the pandemic last year. I saw that our future will somehow be a fusion of physical and nonphysical structures acting in harmony with each other.

Do you recall your family exposing you to culture at an early age?

My mother was an art lover, so she took me to dance performances, movie theaters, and classical concerts when I was growing up. I love these things, but I don’t recall feeling the urge to create in those mediums.

I see. So what are your earliest memories of being compelled by a specific form of expression?

What really wowed me was seeing music videos from the U.S. and England. They were broadcast on a Japanese TV show that played on the weekend, late at night when everybody else was asleep.

What was the first medium you worked in? You deploy very advanced technology now, but I imagine you began with materials that are more tactile.

Washi—rice paper—and sumi, the black ink that’s used for Japanese calligraphy. I easily lost track of time while engaged in this practice. It was like a meditation to me. What I love about it is that while you are drawing a character, you are also creating a balanced shape.

Speaking of shapes, it seems there’s a desire in your work to explore the structural underpinnings of… well, everything! Is this a cosmological urge, or would that be making the subject of your pursuits too macro?

It does seem like I am creating a mini cosmos at the gallery. [laughs] And one of the intentions for this body of work was to create artworks that fuse physical reality with augmented reality. So, yes, you could call that my own little cosmos.