Leiko Ikemura: Momstars

MONSTER ... MOMS ... MOMSTERS ... or rather MOMSTARS!

Born in Tsu, Japan, Leiko Ikemura first caused a furore in the 1980s with her expressive and combative imagery in the context of the Neue Wilde movement. Today she is internationally famous for her girls floating in intermediate worlds and cosmic landscapes with fairytale-like hybrid creatures, as seen in shows at the Kunstmuseum Basel or the National Art Centre in Tokyo. In Japan, she is celebrated as an artist who has become increasingly aware of her cultural origins through her consistent immersion in Western art and has found a unique synthesis of both cultures. At CFA Contemporary Fine Arts in Berlin, she now occupies both floors of the gallery to show works from all her creative periods, right up to her most recent sculptures. Leiko Ikemura initially studied literature in Osaka and Spain, before studying painting at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes in Seville around 1973. She then lived in Zurich, from the 1980s in Cologne and since the fall of the Berlin Wall also in Berlin, where she has held a professorship in painting at the University of the Arts since 1991. In her article, Anaël Pigeat writes that the artist still lives, like the cat inside her, in the place where history can be felt on the street, on the outer skin of the walls and in the behaviour of passers-by. In a malleable city in constant transition, whose present-day geographies have nothing to do with those of her time of arrival. A city in which politics can be seen on the street, just like in her work: from one form to another.

Exhibition:
CFA Contemporary Fine Arts Berlin, 16/3 - 20/4/2024