Title: DuBAI our heaven?
Artist: Takuma Tanaka
Year: 2025
Medium: Mixed media on canvas (acrylic, collage, ink)
Dimensions: 22.7 × 15.8 cm (SM size)

Description:
In DuBAI our heaven?, Takuma Tanaka presents a visceral meditation on modern desire, displacement, and dystopia. Through a dynamic mix of collage, graffiti-like text, and expressive brushwork, the artist evokes the fragmented psyche of contemporary urban life.

A photographic cutout of a gleaming skyline—presumably Dubai—anchors the composition, overlaid by two yellow humanoid figures resembling cartoon rabbits. They appear to float in surreal detachment, suggesting innocence, irony, or a manufactured paradise. Around them, urgent handwritten phrases like "What are we doing?", "We are living here!", and "Human Beings!" are scattered like echoes of collective confusion.

The composition is layered with bold reds, blacks, and pinks that bleed into one another, while childlike airplane sketches and figures convey a dreamlike state of transit and existential questioning. The title poses a provocative query: is this hyper-modern, ultra-wealthy city a new heaven—or merely another illusion?

With this small yet powerful canvas, Tanaka challenges viewers to reflect on the mirages of prosperity and the emotional costs of urban utopias.