photo: KIOKU Keizo
a lark
| Artist | OKI Junko |
|---|---|
| Year | 2015 |
| Material/ Technique | fabric (Victorian jacket), cotton thread, silk thread, wood box |
| Size/ Duration | H70 × W29.5 × D9.5cm |
| Copyright Notice | © OKI Junko |
| Year of acquisition/ donation | 2017 |
| Description | Born 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. |
NOTES
This Collection Data page contains the works and materials in the collection of 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, as of April 1, 2018.
Artists are listed alphabetically by artist’s surname.
Works and materials by the same artists are listed according to the date of the work in principle.
Works whose dates are unidentified are listed at the end of each item. Some works are not listed according to the date of work due to their relations.
The data of works and materials are listed in order of title, production year, material/technique/form, dimensions, donor’s name, copyright holder and credit for photograph.
Dimensions are given by height (H) x width (W) in centimeters for plane work, and height (H) x width (W) x depth (D) in cm for 3-D work. Diameter (Ø) is used for circular work.
For the name of country or city, the name currently used in English is listed in principle.