「Fantastic worlds come to life」2021/4/11〜4/18 at Tsukuba Citizen’s Gallery

One day, my son brought some medaka fish to our home. We put them in a big jar with water plants and started to watch them every day. In their new home, the medakas swam smoothly and peacefully. Water plants softly floating on the water touched the fish comfortably. They swam in the jar, like dancing and playing between the water plants. And that is how my son became the water plant boy.

“Fantastic worlds come to life”

Fantastic Worlds Come to Life
by Marita Ibañez　Curator

Magic, reality, and fantasy. Kikuko Kohno’s work is a mixture of autobiography and dreams, where the dreamlikeness of her characters tells us about her particular way of seeing life, sometimes painfully real, other times fantastic and full of adventures.

Being able to see art pieces done in a great margin of time allows us to see the evolution of an artist, looking at life almost like a girl who fantasizes about images in the sky to an adult woman who lives the adventure of motherhood. Kawano closes this first creative cycle with a drawing series inspired by her children. Her boys, who return her to the fantastic world that she once created, now dance and play through medaka fish, mermaids and nature. They are now the protagonists of new stories.

In this first individual exhibition, we can observe the work of an artist who explores life, different cultures, and places. Kikuko recomposes everything around her, from dance to sewing, from drawing to singing. Above all, she seeks to bring together experiences and learnings, inspiring viewers to search for that magic in their lives. Fantastic Worlds that if we care to observe, we can find in our daily lives.