②Artist Profiles OKI Junko

Oki Junko is an artist who creates works by embroidering colored threads on used cloth. Inspired by a handmade bag her young daughter gave her as a gift, she began her full-f ledged artistic activities to express herself through embroidery around 2002, using tools and fabrics left behind by her mother, who was good at sewing. Used cloth, which she usually uses as her support material, is faded, stained, and battered, and has already been inscribed with memories and time.
Oki also uses ready-made clothes and commercially available cloth bags as supports, which she says is for her an act of “mixing herself up.” The process of interacting with the materials and the congruence of the voices of the fabric and threads with the movements of the artist’s own hands is exactly the work of a craftsperson, and what is engraved there is mindscapes of memories of her mother, daughter, and family members. Oki’s art, in which mere fabrics are given life and appear as if about to start moving, arouses our curiosity and invites us to immerse ourselves in her works.