Artist Statement
I have always loved drawing, and I have drawn almost everything.
To look and to draw — in that moment, I become certain of the existence of the thing before me.
That sensation is what makes me feel alive.
Yet, the moment something is drawn, it immediately begins to recede into the past.
I collect sadness, but I do not express it.
I am interested in disappearance and friction at the boundary between myself and the world.
A small bodily sensation—a tight “kyu”—is a clue to what cannot be seen.
This mechanism becomes visible through my practice, and I encounter a gap between thought and reality: “this is not what I thought.”
My perception shifts. I am moved. My world expands.
I place that moment as it is.
My practice begins with a sadness sensor.
Short BIO
She was raised by a mother practicing wild plant gathering and indigo dyeing, and a father, a ceramic artist and designer.
After working as a landscape designer, she worked as an interpreter connecting people and nature. She developed natural learning programs that encourage awareness through experience.
She conducts an observational practice in which relationships between self and society are projected onto the workings of nature. Stones, shells, soil, seaweed, microorganisms, and insects are collected. She collects, arranges, draws, and observes them.
She began her artistic practice in 2021. In 2024, she presented a painting series using acrylic panels used during the COVID-19 period as support, and received several awards. Since then, her practice has expanded into installation works. She creates spaces based on bodily perception and observation. She has expanded her activities to exhibitions in disaster-affected areas of the Great East Japan Earthquake and in museum solo exhibition
Education
- 2020 B.A. oil Painting, Kyoto University of the Arts
Awards
- 2025 Second Prize,IAG AWARD Exhibition2025|Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, Tokyo
- 2024 Excellence Award,Asago Biennale|Asago Art Village, Hyogo
- 2024 Grand Prize, ACT Art Award Exhibition |The Artcomplex Center of Tokyo, Tokyo
Solo and Duo Exhibitions
- 2026 “Body and Memory” Asago Biennale – Focus Exhibition, Asago Art Village, Hyogo
- 2026 “The Archive of Sadness”, Namiki Gallery, Tokyo
- 2025 “Ref-rection”, Namiki Gallery, Tokyo
- 2025 “Omake de Ame”, Solo Exhibition as Grand Prize Winner, ACT Artcomplex Center of Tokyo
- 2023 “Sunlit Moments”, Citizens’ gallery in Taiji Kiyokawa Memorial Gallery, Tokyo
- 2023–2025 Solo Exhibitions, Namiki Gallery, Tokyo
- 2021–2024 “Noriko Okuyama × Michi OGAWA”, Duo Exhibition Series, Namiki Gallery, Tokyo
Group Exhibitions
- 2026 – The 29th Taro Okamoto Award for Contemporary Art,Taro Okamoto Museum of Art Kawasaki, Kanagawa
- 2026 – SAGA ARTIST FAIR | EDAUME (former Edame Sake Brewery), Saga
- 2026 – IAG AWARD Exhibition2026|Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, Tokyo
- 2025 – Komatsu Biennale Miyamoto Saburo Award for Original Sketch,Komatsu City MIYAMOTO Saburo Museum, Ishikawa
- 2025 – Marginal Art Fair ed2: Unsettled Landscapes | Hirono Town Gymnasium, Fukushima
- 2025 – Marginal Art Fair × Sophia University Global Coexistence Research Institute POPUP Exhibition | Sophia University, Tokyo
(Artists addressing feminism in wartime Ukraine and the Fukushima nuclear disaster) - 2025 “MARGINAL ART FAIR Fukushima Hirono“
- 2024 The 42nd Ueno Royal Museum Grand Prize Exhibition
- 2023 Komatsu Biennale Miyamoto Saburo Award for Original Sketch,Komatsu City MIYAMOTO Saburo Museum, Ishikawa
Other
- Collective “Mika Boshi”(2025-)
- Residency “Namiki AIR” (2025)
【Publications / Writings】
- Co-authored: “Community Building in the ‘Forest of Treasures'”, Parks and Open Space, Vol.75 No.1, 2014 (Japanese; on environmental community planning)
- Co-authored: “Feeding Behavior of Saturniidae on Pourthiaea villosa”, YASAN, Vol.85, 2019 (Natural science research)
- Illustrator: The Earth’s Treasured Soil, 2022 (Children’s science picture book)
