Ring Cam Famous - AKIRA OHISO

Artist Statement

Akira Ohiso is a Seattle-based artist who explores the intersection between the digital and physical worlds. Working primarily on an iPad with Procreate—and often using just his index finger, making his practice literally digital art—Ohiso reimagines collage and assemblage traditions through contemporary digital tools. His work plays with the tension between the intimate act of creation -I create therefore I am human- and the cyber world that surrounds it. 

He culls material from his own impromptu photography while walking the city, using his iPhone to scour Ring cam footage, social media, overheard conversations, and the endless saturation of content that drifts through his transom. By printing his pieces at FedEx and framing them in IKEA frames, he embraces accessible, “low-brow” materials as a deliberate nod to pop culture and outsider art aesthetics.

Before moving into digital media in 2014, Ohiso’s practice centered on physical collage and assemblage, a foundation that continues to inform his layered, tactile approach to digital composition. His work blurs the line between analog and digital, creating a third space called “phygital,” which challenges notions of authenticity, craft, and authorship in the age of screens and reproduction.

As a child, Ohiso studied painting under Aida Wheden, a regional artist trained by Thomas Hart Benton and Hans Hofmann. He earned his BA in Studio Art in 2001, studying with Lilliana Porter, Maureen Connor, and Debra Priestley—mentors who deepened his understanding of conceptual art and narrative form.

Ohiso lives in Seattle with his wife and three children, where he continues to explore how art can bridge the digital and the human.

Ring Cam Famous

Akira Ohiso

Ring Cam Famous is a series of drawings that explores the culture of neighborhood surveillance. I became interested in the scenes and interactions on the Ring app—a heterotopic space where trespassers appear unexpectedly on the motion-sensor camera, Ring subscribers share video, and other subscribers comment. Clips of porch thefts, inquiries about mysterious noises (“fireworks or gunshots?”), lost pets, and alleged UFOs reveal a new kind of citizen surveillance, where the people captured—masked, unaware, or performing for the lens—become part of a collective portrait of fear, curiosity, and fleeting connection. Using screenshots, I capture single moments from these clips, turning digital fragments into still images that I then draw for an audience outside of the app. The surveillers, in turn, are surveilled. Crimes rarely are reported or prosecuted, so what began as neighborhood safety has evolved into an agoraphobic digital theater.