Bright colors and trompe-l’oeil feature prominently in the work of Japanese artist Mao Wakayama. Geometric shapes and straight lines contend with apples, mountains, and forested hillsides. A skull emerges from a bullet shape in a blue microcosm, severe triangles circumscribe mountains, and an autumnal apple shines from above in Wakayama’s reflections which are informed by their experience of identity, perception and reality. The cut sea and covered mountains become symbolic metaphors for a life delineated by gender, ethnicity, and other ways in which one experiences and moves about in the world.