Whitestone Gallery is pleased to present Becoming Her, a group exhibition that brings together the practices of Rebecca Bernau, Azuki Furuya and Shizuka Ando—three artists who approach the figure not as a fixed subject, but as a site of transformation. Across painting, collage, and hybrid processes, their works unfold a quiet yet persistent inquiry into how the self is formed: through memory, through material, and through the unseen forces that shape perception and belonging.

Rebecca Bernau, "Closer" 2026, Oil on canvas, 80 × 60 cm

Rebecca Bernau's practice navigates between digital and analog, creating fluid compositions in which figures dissolve into their surroundings. Her layered forms evoke the interplay between past and present, conscious and unconscious, offering a vision of identity as continuously in flux. Central to her practice is the notion of "roots," through which she explores the interconnectedness of past and present selves.

Azuki Furuya, "By Her Own Hand" 2026, Acrylic, oil and mixed media collage, 91 × 72.7 cm

Azuki Furuya's practice is grounded in a materially intensive process of collage and sanding, in which layered sheets of paper are built up and gradually uncovered. Her process reveals the body as a stratified surface, where histories accumulate and are exposed, echoing the fragility and resilience embedded in representations of women across time.

Shizuka Ando, "Beyond This Point Ⅱ" 2026, Mineral pigments and acrylic on canvas, 60.6 × 50.3 cm

Shizuka Ando's paintings explore the ambiguity of selfhood through figures that remain deliberately indeterminate. Her figures, often faceless or softly obscured, resist singular definition, suggesting a self that exists between roles—performed, observed, and internalized. Drawing from both personal narrative and broader existential questions, her work reflects on identity as something enacted and perpetually in formation.

The exhibition title, Becoming Her, references a philosophical and feminist framework in which identity is understood as a process rather than a fixed state. Echoing Simone de Beauvoir's seminal assertion that womanhood is not innate but constructed, the exhibition situates the female subject as an evolving condition—one informed by lived experience, cultural context, and embodied memory.

Presented together, the works of Ando, Furuya, and Bernau articulate a shared sensitivity to the unseen dimensions of identity. Through their distinct approaches to form and material, they offer a space for reflection on the complexities of becoming—where the figure is not defined by what is visible, but by what remains in flux.