Statement
The institutionally standard format of explaining what I do:
I am a multidisciplinary, social practice artist. Using material and techniques of manual labor and survival, I invite people who don’t think of themselves as artistic into the creative process as together we build environments in which viewers can process their own narratives. My work often explores the ephemeral nature of memory and place.
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How I actually feel:
Born an abomination, I travel between worlds seeking other monsters
Bio
Midori ( 美登里 ) is a queer, Japanese American artist. She creates work that gives shape and texture to emotion, desire, repulsion, collective memory, and subconscious revisions of experience. Her performances are physical and durational, often inviting the audience to join in and become co-conspirators in the labor of art.
Reclamation of material and collaboration are core values that inform almost everything she creates, and the multiplicity of perspective and disorientation are ongoing themes in her work.
Born and raised in Japan with Japanese and German American heritage, Midori grew up loving Japanese folk art and traditional survival technologies, even as she struggled against the pressures of racism and sexism. Now a San Franciscan of thirty years, her body, like her art, bridges multiple cultures.
After serving in the military, she began her art career performing in queer nightclubs, collaborating with other ‘weirdo’ transgressive and experimental artists, saying “Sure, I’ll do it!” to even the oddest of opportunities. She describes herself as “born an abomination, traveling between worlds seeking other monsters – we are so many monsters.”
Midori’s work has been shown at San Francisco Asian Art Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Leslie Lohman Museum, SoMArts, Das Arts Amsterdam, Gorilla Gallery Oaxaca, Root Division, among others.
