KAORU MOTOMIYA     1

I address a wide range of topics in my art, including the discovery of the concept of information, perception and consciousness, mistakes or errors  in systems, perfection and imperfection, metabolic  regeneration, etc. I am particularly interested in how body image have changed. For example, I imagine how the concept of body image changes through the history of medicine, beginning with anatomical studies  from the thirteenth century to the  present time, contrasting Western and Asian cultures. In my work, what you find is meant for you. Everybody can perceive what they want from my work. It depends on the person.

Born in 1963 in Tokyo, Japan, Motomiya studied printmaking at Musashino Art University. She studied human anatomy and the fabrication of the specimens at the Medical Museum of Tokyo University, where she has worked since 1997.

Her current research concerns transformations in the image of the human body over the centuries, and cultural variations on the same theme. Her two-dimensional format derives from nineteenth-century Japanese scientific prints. In her three-dimensional works she often focuses on the rabbit, a popular image in Japanese consumer culture, where it is rendered as cute and affectionate. But Motomiya aims to return the animal to our direct perception, showing it as lukewarm in life and stiff in death.  She contrasts her experience of dissection with the preference of many of her contemporaries for the superficial, which has enjoyed such widespread popularity among Japanese youth since 1980s, and which permeates both computer games and television shows. Her art proposes that such mass media devices undermine the individual's sensitivity to the complexity or abjection of living things. Her broader subject is the widespread denial of reality in the society in which she lives.