SICF23 EXHIBITION Winner Exhibition Mao Kuroyama: Your Circumstances, Our Circumstances

Spiral is pleased to present a solo exhibition of the work of Mao Kuroyama, who won the WACOAL STUDYHALL KYOTO Award in the EXHIBITION section at SICF23 (the 23 Spiral Independent Creators Festival) in May 2022. The exhibition will feature Kuroyama’s best-known work Love in the Bloodline and her new work Captive.

Inspired by the practice of mothers dressing their children in handmade clothes and the deep love underlying this act, Love in the Bloodline endeavors to render visible psychological connections among female members of her mother’s family, such as between mothers and daughters or among sisters. The work involves dismantling previously worn clothes and reducing them to fibers, then mixing elements of different items together and reconstructing them. By tracing the memories contained in clothing, the artist transforms various relationships and connections into works of art and at the same time into specimens.

Meanwhile, Captive focuses on the home, and specifically the marital home in which the artist’s paternal grandmother was bound to her husband’s family business after marriage. Using threads from the dismantled suit of her grandfather, Kuroyama embroidered a genealogy of heads of the family, as recorded in old documents, onto a curtain found in her grandfather’s home, giving visual form to burdens and constraints of familial duty borne by her grandmother.

Through Kuroyama’s works centered around the two households and families to which she belongs, we are made aware of their myriad aspects and challenges.

Kuroyama is gaining growing acclaim, and in addition to the SICF award, received the VOCA Honorable Mention Award at the VOCA Exhibition 2023. We invite you to enjoy this solo exhibition by a promising emerging artist.

For more information on SICF23 awards winners, please click here .