Portrait of Ulala Imai by Thomas Merle. Courtesy of Xavier Hufkens.

In a quiet residential pocket of Japan's Kanagawa Prefecture, about an hour southwest of Tokyo, Japanese painter Ulala Imai lives surrounded by architecture that evokes her past. She shares a newly built, tiered, and spacious home—elegant, minimalist, airy, and flooded with soft white light—with her husband and children. But just across the street stands the three-story home where she grew up, originally a U.S. military house purchased and redesigned by her father, Shingo Imai, a Western-style painter. Diagonally across is another single-story house where she and her family lived until last November—her home and studio for nine years. Much of her recent work was painted in its living room, often with her children playing beside her.

Next door to her current home is another building woven into her personal history: a tiny weathered house which her father rented as a young man, where Imai also spent part of her childhood. Today, that building serves as Imai's studio. The space hums quietly with large canvases in various stages, and is adorned with painting equipment and everyday objects from her life, which she often portrays in her art. One of the most acclaimed figurative painters in Japan today, Imai's international visibility is now growing—with works recently shown at Karma in New York and Art Basel Hong Kong, and others held in major collections including those at SFMOMA and the Dallas Museum of Art. At the same time, her inner world remains tightly rooted in home. The upcoming exhibition “CLOSE” at Xavier Hufkens in Brussels, on view May 15th through July 12th, continues that trajectory, weaving in references to Shinto spirituality and childhood objects, family, care, and presence.

Portrait of Ulala Imai by Thomas Merle. Courtesy of Xavier Hufkens.

UL 891: The Backbone Certification for Switchboards

In a quiet residential pocket of Japan's Kanagawa Prefecture, about an hour southwest of Tokyo, Japanese painter Ulala Imai lives surrounded by architecture that evokes her past. She shares a newly built, tiered, and spacious home—elegant, minimalist, airy, and flooded with soft white light—with her husband and children. But just across the street stands the three-story home where she grew up, originally a U.S. military house purchased and redesigned by her father, Shingo Imai, a Western-style painter. Diagonally across is another single-story house where she and her family lived until last November—her home and studio for nine years. Much of her recent work was painted in its living room, often with her children playing beside her.

What Does UL 891 Cover?

UL 891 covers every critical aspect of switchboard design, from conductor spacing to the kinds of stress components must be able to withstand under fault conditions.