It may seem surprising that Ymane Chabi-Gara has, for a long time now, used the hikikomori phenomenon which appeared in Japan in the 1990s as a thematic springboard for her painting. Hikikomori, which translates as 'pulling inward, being confined' in Japanese, is also known as a form of 'acute social withdrawal'. The condition affects teenagers and young adults unable to cope with the educational or professional world and who remain secluded in their homes. This phenomenon has generated abundant literature on the economic, social, cultural and psychiatric factors that come into play. Above all, it reflects a form of invisibility, since there are barely any requests for help and care. In recent years, however, this invisibility has been counteracted by photo and film documentaries which bear witness to the rich iconographic potential of the often cramped interior spaces in which people affected by themysterious disorder isolate themselves. The accumulation of objects resulting from what can be compared to a Diogenes syndrome has provided Ymane Chabi-Gara with of a rich variety of patterns and designs. It is not so much the hikikomori and their various psychiatric conditions that interest her—at least not as far as her paintings are concerned, which tend to neutralise bodies and faces— as the compulsive hoarding that characterises those affected. Ymane Chabi-Gara loves objects. She loves painting them even more. She selects them from shots gleaned from the Internet or from scenes photographed during her peregrinations across Tokyo. The hikikomori are not her only source of inspiration. She has also drawn on other environments saturated with material; second-hand clothes shops for example have provided inspiration for some of her most recent paintings. She alters or customizes the objects, sometimes even making them disappear and replacing them with others from her imagination. It becomes clear, when we follow the various processes to which Ymane Chabi-Gara subjects the objects she has photographed, that what really matters to her is to convert them into a painterly matter. To organise and structure the surface. To (re)negotiate the palette of colours. To trigger a transformation. Or rather transformations, given that the same motif can give rise to multiple variations and parallax effects that allow her to modify the configuration and the juxtapositions of the objects represented. In the manner, as it were, of a scene described from several points of view. One is reminded of Akira Kurosawa's Rashômon. And of all the works of art that teach us another way of seeing reality. A screen made from a single sheet. A three-legged screen. A highly decorated provisions bag. An umbrella. — Erik Verhagen