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Exhibitions

LEGACY: Binta Ayofemi, Adrian L. Burrell, Rachel Bridges, Ivan Bridges, Masako Miki, and Jean Isamu Nagai
January 18 - April 1, 2023

Masako Miki: New Mythologies
June 16 - October 12, 2021

Shapeshifters
Jan 12 - Mar 23, 2019

Conversations with Fox, Feather, and Ghost
Mar 4 - Apr 30, 2016

MASAKO MIKI

Masako Miki (b. 1973 Osaka, Japan) is a multimedia artist navigating diverse mediums, including textile and bronze sculpture, watercolor, and outdoor public installations to explore the intersection of mythology, folklore, and contemporary social issues.

The semi-abstracted forms achieved with Miki’s striking palette of bold colors and rich textures refer to the Yokai or Shapeshifters of Shinto folklore. Miki's work depicts the tsukumogami (the shapeshifting spirits that take the form of household objects and tools) from ancient Japanese literature, using them to represent the constantly shifting mythologies within our segmented, plural reality.

Upon arriving in the United States from Japan at the age of 18 years old, Miki became increasingly interested in the concept of multiple truths and identities existing within the same body. Miki addresses the complex messages about the stories we create, and the mythologies we uphold in her Shapeshifter series, a selection of which you can see in her studio today. The felted wool sculptures take on the shape of inanimate objects, blurred with the contours of plant life, human and animal bodies, and other elements of the natural world, surrounded by painted organic, bodily forms on the walls and floor. Her imaginary, semi-abstract sculptures are generally held up by wooden legs, affecting a posture that morphs art, design, and craft.

Miki has exhibited her immersive felt sculptural installations and watercolor works on paper in the US, and internationally. She has exhibited at institutions including Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and de Young Museum. Miki was a recipient of the 2018 Inga Maren Otto Fellowship Award from Watermill Center in New York, also has been a resident artist including de Young Museum and Facebook HQ. Miki’s work is in collections at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Colección Solo in Spain, The Byrd Hoffman WaterMill Foundation, Facebook, Inc., and Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Miki’s monumental outdoor public art installations can be seen at Uber HQ in San Francisco and OH Bay cultural coastal park in Shenzhen, China. She is currently working on a public commission with SFMOMA and San Francisco Arts Commission designing functional sculptures for the Minna and Natoma Street Corridor Project. Miki is a native of Japan and has been based in Berkeley, California for over twenty years. She has been represented by CULT Aimee Friberg since 2013 and with Ryan Lee in New York since 2022.

MASAKO MIKI, Installation View, Shapeshifting, KMAC Contemporary Art Museum, Louisville, KY, 2023

MASAKO MIKI, Plant Ghost (lavender dots), 2022

MASAKO MIKI, Installation View, Constant Carnival: The Haas Brothers in Context, Katonah Museum, Katonah, New York, 2022

MASAKO MIKI, Good Morning Japan, Nassima Landau Foundation, Tel Aviv, Israel, 2022

MASAKO MIKI, Installation View, Bay Area Now 9, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA 2023

MASAKO MIKI, Installation View, What Has Been and What Could Be: The BAMPFA Collection, Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA 2023

MASAKO MIKI, Hyakki Yagyo, Night Parade of One Hundred Demons – Beginning of another life with Ruby Red Fox Deity, 2021 – Collection of SFMOMA

MASAKO MIKI, Installation View, Masako Miki / MATRIX 273, Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA, 2019

MASAKO MIKI, Installation View, New Mythologies, CULT Aimee Friberg, 2021

MASAKO MIKI, Hyakki Yagyo, Night Parade of One Hundred Demons – Nurikabe Yokai (plaster wall shapeshifter) illuminates the universe within us, 2021

MASAKO MIKI, Installation View, UBER Commission, San Francisco, 2021

MASAKO MIKI, Installation View, Coastal Cultural Park, OH Bay, Bao’an District, Shenzhen, China, 2020-2021

MASAKO MIKI, Installation View, Shapeshifters CULT Aimee Friberg Exhibitions, 2019

MASAKO MIKI, Installation View, Conversations with Fox, Feather and Ghost, CULT Aimee Friberg Exhibitions, 2016

Participation to mysticism, ink on paper, 22 x 30 inches, 2014

Singing whale, ink on paper, 6.5 x 7.3 feet, 2014

Singing whale, detail

Helplessness in hopefulness (red), ink on paper, 30 x 22 inches, 2013

Helplessness in hopefulness (blue), ink on paper, 30 x 22 inches, 2013

Making her disappear (white), ink on paper, 22 x 30 inches, 2013

Making her disappear (black), ink on paper, 22 x 30 inches, 2013

Making her disappear (pink), ink on paper, 5 x 7 inches, 2013

Not knowing when to wake up, ink on Nepalese paper, 14 x 20 inches, 2013

Asking wolf, ink on Nepalese paper, 20 x 14 inches, 2013

Complex relationship (bear and deer), ink, gouache, watercolor, collage on paper, 22 x 30 inches, 2013

Complex relationship (wolf and fox), wool, 8 x 14 x 8 inches, 10 x 16 x 10 inches, 2013

This could be the best thing that ever happened to her, fiberglass, resin, spray paint, artificial snow, 65 x 60 x 28 inches, 2012

This could be the best thing that ever happened to her, detail shot

This could be the best thing that ever happened to her, ink on Nepalese paper, 6.5 x 17 feet, 2012

This could be the best thing that ever happened to her, detail shot

Consequence of not letting go, ink and frisket on paper, 30 x 22 inches, 2012

This could be the best thing that ever happened to her (bear and deer), gouache and ink on paper, 22 x 30 inches, 2012

Illusion of illusion, gouache and ink on paper, 22 x 30 inches, 2011

Growing anglers against her with, wool on composition leafed wood panel, 16 x 19 x 15 inches, 2012

Found crown, wool on composition leafed wood panel, 7.5 x 12 x 12 inches, 2012