Kunié Sugiura: A film by Robert Palumbo
Kunié Sugiura
US 2025
Director: Robert Palumbo
TRT: 8:55
"Kunié Sugiura" is a 9-minute cinematic profile of Japanese and American artist Kunié Sugiura which examines the narrative of her artistic life, the experimental processes involved in several bodies of her work, her resilience and tenacity as an artist, and her essential need to make art.
We learn about her early life in Japan, and her desire as a teenager to come to America. We visit Kunié in her Chinatown NYC loft, where she has both lived and worked for over 50 years. In a series of vignettes of her living and working in the loft, we come to understand that the loft is a kind of laboratory for both Kunié's life and for her art. She has been pushing the boundaries of photography since the start of her career in the 1970's.
This film accompanied Sugiura's 2025 restrospective "Photopainting" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and her 2025 exhibit "Discoveries" at the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University. It premiered in New York City at Alison Bradley projects in April, 2025.