Installation view of Kazuko Miyamoto: To perform a line, 2022© Naho Kubota. Courtesy of Japan Society

First Institutional Solo Exhibition of Kazuko Miyamoto in New York

It’s still difficult to travel around Japan, but cherry blossoms can be enjoyed in many ways! By Tiffany Lambert, courtesy of JAPAN Forward

Since 1971, Japan Society Gallery has been the premier institution in the United States for the display and interpretation of Japanese art and culture in a global context. Through groundbreaking exhibitions and related programs, the Gallery cultivates a broader understanding and appreciation of Japan’s contributions to global artistic heritage and celebrates the diversity of Japanese visual expression from prehistoric times to the present day.

A new installation titled Kazuko Miyamoto: To perform a line enters a canon of historic exhibitions held at Japan Society in New York.

The exhibition extends the institution’s legacy of presenting not only the best of the arts of Japan, but of supporting underrepresented artists—especially women—and artists at important, often early, moments in their careers.

Through fellowships, grants, and installations, Japan Society has been an innovative platform for Japanese artists. Among them are many well-known names, such as including Shikō Munakata (1959), Yayoi Kusama (1965–66), Shigeko Kubota (1978), Ushio Shinohara (1982), Daido Moriyama (1999), and Yoko Ono (2000).

Kazuko Miyamoto: To perform a line builds upon this history and serves as a continuation of the ideas that will be explored throughout Japan Society’s exhibition calendar and related programming in 2022 and beyond. The exhibition underscores the history of international modernisms by amplifying the representation of a significant artistic voice.

To perform a line

The first solo institutional survey of Kazuko Miyamoto (b. 1942, Tokyo) covers her critical contributions to the minimalism movement through early paintings and drawings from the 1960s, her breakthrough string constructions in the 1970s, culminating in her kimono series from 1987 through the 2000s.

The exhibition brings together key bodies of work which have never been shown together until now. It offers a crucial opportunity for a broad audience to encounter Miyamoto’s rich oeuvre for the first time.

With a strikingly independent spirit, Kazuko Miyamoto is an artist who has never been intimidated to eschew conventions and chart her own course. Miyamoto’s expanding vision for over five decades has resulted in paintings, drawing, sculptures, photographs, and performances, as well as installation and textile works that oscillate between geometric and organic forms.

Throughout her career, the presence of the artist’s hand has remained a constant aesthetic sensibility, as has the use of modest, often found materials such as nails, string, umbrellas, tree branches, brown paper bags, and newspaper.

By highlighting critical moments of experimentation, the exhibition traces the conceptual complexity and visual range of an artist who has challenged and broadened the legacy of post-1960s international art.