Leiko Ikemura career’s over five decades has been defined by a rich unfolding of artistic languages, media, and constellations of references. Early on she engaged in a continuous reinvention of Expressionism through compositions and brush strokes that draw from various lineages yet coalesce towards making fantastic worlds of psychological landscapes that cross human, animal, and vegetal boundaries. A major thread in her practice includes her figures, primarily of ceramic and bronze, traversing boundaries of imagination, from allusion to mythological formation across several contexts up to and including contemporary popular cultures. They often include the little girl motif, which reflects Ikemura’s commitment to feminist ideas and perspectives, and speak to her preoccupation with inverting the dominant male gaze of art history and destabilizing societal expectations towards women. Another, more recent, frequently appearing character in Ikemura’s world is the rabbit, again stemming from a multiplicity of art historical and visual genealogies. Following the March 2011 Tohoku earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster, Ikemura created the first Usagi Kannon (the Japanese word for ‘rabbit’, and Kannon, the bodhisattva of compassion). In this exhibition, a selection of several themes and media in her practice over the years are presented, including her engagement with the legacy of the Second World War in the Pacific. While narrative history takes a discreet position in Ikemura’s works, sometimes behind the horizon, the horrors of that era and its lingering effects are overwhelmingly felt in the energy of the work, in its chromatic spectrum and tenor. 

Works in the exhibition: Double Figure (2021), patinated bronze, 58.5 × 107 × 168 cm; O. T. / Untitled (1980–81), video projection of drawings, dimensions vary; Untitled (Spider) (1980s), acrylic on canvas, 210 × 240 cm; Yokais (1983), charcoal on paper, 210 × 480 cm, framed 231.5 × 498 cm. Courtesy of the artist