The question about a contemporary artist like Maio Motoko in the world of contemporary art in the 21st century is...
What can we make of her art?
Contemporary – yes; totally defined by her cultural heritage – yes; tenaciously loyal to that heritage – yes; and yet, providing a cultural/visual/artistic experience that is not in the slightest constrained by time, place, culture by those commitments – yes again. And it is that universal sentiment about visual art that gives it such currency
FOLDING & UNFOLDING
THE MEDIUM
One fundamental thing about Maio’s work is the focus on the screen, that folding and unfolding panorama which hides and reveals.
Maio became fascinated with this very special Japanese device and explored its opportunities not just as an indelible component of the Japanese art tradition, but perhaps even more so as a means for exploring the nature of the Japanese psyche.
By connecting flat surfaces with double hinges they become a constantly transforming solid. This solid embraces, deflects and intersects light – herein lies the fascination of the screen.
On her signature work
13-fold screen
刻々脈々 kyoku kyoko myaku myaku
Moment by moment heartbeat by heartbeat
I was greatly encouraged and overwhelmed with the artistic and creative possibilities of the form of the Japanese screen.
Constructed on the flat horizontal it can become three dimensional, and that shape too can be changed at will. It is a form that plays with the yin and the yang opposites of solid and fluid, flat and cubic, shadow and light.
Truly it is like a supernatural form, one that has immeasurable and universal appeal. And there is surely nothing else which so aptly expresses the unique characteristics of Japanese culture.
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Maio Motoko
PROCESS & STILLNESS
Now one could be forgiven for saying well, that is all a bit over the top - this almost spiritual eulogising of the humble, or not so humble after all, folding screen, but I can see the artist’s feelings here – sense of the screen being a metaphor for a culture and at the same time a kind of metaphor for a life – the folding and unfolding, the revelation and the retreat, the opening and the closing, the process and then the stillness.
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Remarks by Edmund Capon AO OBE
18 January 2017
Speech given at The Sofitel on Collins, Melbourne
