Radical Clay: Contemporary Women Artists from Japan, The Art Institute of Chicago
Largely inspired by the body and the natural world, the creations presented in Radical Clay: Contemporary Women Artists from Japan speak for themselves in their beauty and sometimes their striking oddness.
Today, thanks in large part to the artists promoting their own work through exhibitions, interviews, and an online presence, as well as pioneering private collectors and dealers who have created a US market for such works, sculptures by Japanese women ceramists are more frequently on view at major American museums. And this surge of interest from the US has had an impact back home in Japan. Senior figures with decades of success behind them, such as Ogawa Machiko and Tsuboi Asuka, are now recognized as groundbreaking contemporary artists. Works by Koike Shōko and Kishi Eiko are in the collections of dozens of major international institutions. And at last, younger artists are finding that their work is gaining the attention of collectors and museums the world over; works by Hosono Hitomi and Aoki Katsuyo have even been featured in presentations of global contemporary ceramic art, though such inclusion is still a rare occurrence.
The first Art Institute presentation dedicated solely to works by Japanese women, Radical Clay joins the recent influx of presentations and exhibitions by major institutions but also stands out in its inclusion of artists of all three formative generations from the 1960s onward. I hope you’ll stop by to enjoy these mesmerizing works in person and that you’ll join me for a panel with two of the artists featured in the exhibition, Hosono Hitomi and Yamaguchi Mio, on March 23.
—Janice Katz, Roger L. Weston Associate Curator of Japanese Art
Radical Clay: Contemporary Women Artists from Japan runs through June 3 in galleries 108 and 109.