Masako Miki exhibition: 'The Garden of Wandering Spirits'
Masako Miki transforms the gallery into an immersive Japanese-inspired domestic interior that opens onto an imagined garden landscape populated by felted-wool sculptures and watercolor paintings. Her work introduces viewers to enchanted characters known as Yōkai, supernatural beings from Japanese folklore believed to inhabit everyday items and elements of nature such as umbrellas, rocks, and trees. Through abstraction, Miki translates the morphic qualities of the Yōkai into visual language, creating playful figures that resist fixed interpretation and embody fluid identities that move between the sacred and the common, the animate and inanimate. With her cast of shapeshifters, Miki extends this ancient mythology into the present, emphasizing how the objects we make and the landscapes we design generate cultural narratives that move between imagination and lived experience.
Informed by the artist’s upbringing in Japan and three decades of living in California, this installation reflects Miki’s research into the history of Japanese gardens in the U.S., tracing their evolution into sites where cultural traditions and perspectives intersect and new meanings emerge. The exhibition echoes the contemplative experience of moving through these gardens, creating a space for pause and reflection. In this surreal environment laden with vibrant Yōkai, Miki encourages us to consider our surroundings imbued with presence and memories. Her works foster connection and empathy, inviting us to create new stories and mythologies through which we may better understand ourselves, each other, and our desired futures.
The Garden of Wandering Spirits is organized by SCAD Museum of Art associate curator Brittany Richmond.
About the artist
Masako Miki (b. 1973, Osaka, Japan; lives and works in Berkeley, Calif.) holds an M.F.A. from San José State University, Calif., and a B.F.A. from Notre Dame de Namur University, Belmont, Calif. Miki has presented recent solo exhibitions at the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University, Houston; Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt), Boston; Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco (ICA SF); de Young Museum, San Francisco; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA); Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) San José; and KMAC Contemporary Art Museum, Louisville, Ky., as well as a two-person exhibition with Paul Klee at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). Her work is held in the permanent collections of SFMOMA; BAMPFA; McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, Corte Madera, Calif.; Collección SOLO, Madrid; The Byrd Hoffman Watermill Foundation, New York; and Tweed Museum of Art, Duluth, Minn., among others. Recent commissions include the design of Maison Hermès’ windows in Ginza, Tokyo; a site-specific installation for the Minna Natoma Arts Corridor in San Francisco; and a permanent installation of bronze sculptures at Uber HQ in San Francisco. Miki is represented by Ryan Lee, New York, and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco.