Leiko Ikemura

Tsu, Mie Prefecture, Japan, 1951

            Leiko Ikemura has distinguished herself as one of the most unique voices in contemporary art, weaving a dialogue between Eastern and Western traditions with a distinctive sensitivity that explores the nuances of femininity and spirituality. In 1970, she began her studies at Osaka University, where she remained until 1972. She later trained in painting at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de Santa Isabel de Hungría in Seville, Spain (1973–1978). Her itinerant life then took her to Zurich, Cologne, and Berlin—where she now lives and works—consolidating an artistic practice that embraces cultural duality as a reflection of her own Japanese-Swiss identity.

            Her work is marked by female figures inhabiting a liminal space: ethereal beings, often girls or spirits, who exist between the human, the animal, and the vegetal. These fragile yet powerful figures evoke a femininity that challenges social and cultural norms. Ikemura works intuitively, using oil, tempera, and watercolor on canvas or jute, applying translucent layers that evoke a dreamlike atmosphere. Her sculptures—crafted from glazed terracotta, bronze, and cast glass—take on soft, tactile forms. This distinctive style, fusing Japanese sansuiga, Surrealism, and postwar abstraction, creates landscapes and figures that oscillate between reality and reverie, offering a vision of femininity that transcends idealization to reveal its emotional and spiritual complexity. A recurring motif in her work is the "usagi" (rabbit), which Ikemura began exploring after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and the Fukushima nuclear disaster, symbolizing resilience and renewal in the face of tragedy.

            Ikemura’s institutional recognition began with her first solo exhibition at the Bonn Kunstverein in 1983. Her work has been exhibited in major museums such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Kunstmuseum Basel, the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, and the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich (2021). Her pieces are part of the permanent collections of these and other institutions, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo and the National Museum of Art, Osaka. Through her practice, Ikemura not only redefines notions of identity and transformation, but also offers a poetic testimony to how femininity and nature intertwine in an eternal cycle of creation and resistance.