photo: KIOKU Keizo

a lark

ArtistOKI Junko
Year2015
Material/ Techniquefabric (Victorian jacket), cotton thread, silk thread, wood box
Size/ DurationH70 × W29.5 × D9.5cm
Copyright Notice© OKI Junko
Year of acquisition/ donation2017(作品購入年月日:2017/03/31)
DescriptionBorn in Saitama, Japan in 1963. Lives and works in Kanagawa.

It was a bag her daughter made for her when she was 39 years old that launched Oki Junko into the medium of embroidery. Inspired by the playful expression she saw in this bag, which her daughter made by boldly cutting up and embroidering some fabric Oki inherited from her mother, she immersed herself in making her own embroidery as if liberating herself. She starting out making hand-embroidered bags and neckties under the name Woky Shoten, but from the age of 46 she began concentrating on making artworks as a means of expressing her own ideas. In 2014 she published a collection of her works titled PUNK. In recent years she has continued to develop new ideas while also putting her energy into the “gris gris” series in which her artistic vision is concentrated into pieces of just a few centimeters.

Using fine sewing thread and without sketching in advance, Oki resolutely hand-stitches all her work. The results cover the surface of the fabric like living creatures, causing her work to undulate unevenly. The emotional ups and downs she experiences throughout the day are translated into the act of stitching, with viewers often overwhelmed by the traces of dense stitches. "a swallow" and "a lark" form a pair and were made by taking apart a single Victorian jacket. Separated from the body, the two sleeves are engraved with countless lines of thread to form patterns that resemble wriggling birds’ feathers while also seeming to be fixated with death. The works not only have the visceral quality of clothing that once covered someone’s body but also embody Oki’s worldview according to which she refers to her pieces as her own children and insists on producing work of a size that can be grasped physically in the blink of an eye. "midnight" was newly created for “Nous,” an exhibition of work from the museum’s collection held in 2016. It hints at a new direction for Oki work based on a technique that at once concentrates the density of the stitching and expands the size of the images by joining together pieces of fabric.

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