Kei Takemura


K.T.'s Living Room in Tokyo; Premonition of an Earthquake, 2005 (Italian synthetic cloth, Japanese silk thread, transparency, permanent pen)

In the giant wall piece by Kei Tekamura, thread pays homage to her native culture and tradition. The artist has used Japanese silk thread in combination with Italian synthetic cloth and German wax and felt pencils, as she humorously stated when describing the work, and these materials prove that the work also pays homage to the entire world. The substance of the work, which can be conjectured from the depiction of her room from the time when she was a child in Tokyo, is still another homage, namely to her childhood and her memories. And if ever, it is precisely in this era of digital opportunities that we do not want our memories to vanish. Tekamura does not record them with a photographic camera but, rather, materialises them in huge images, with transparent, soft materials that accentuate fragility and other gentle feelings associated with childhood. Furthermore, the work intensely radiates a whole spectrum of sensations, including the feeling of uncertainty, which the artist experienced recently when visiting her homeland after long years of living in Berlin. While in Japan, she survived an earthquake of the third degree (according to the Japanese scale), and she was shocked to see how atrophied her feelings of negligence and courage had become after a long time of living abroad. The fear that she experienced – in contrast with other people surrounding her in that moment – incited a visual meditation entitled K.T.'s Living Room in Tokyo; Premonition of an Earthquake.

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Born in 1975 in Tokyo (Japan). Between 1994 and 1998 she studied painting at the Tokyo National University for Art and Music, where she also completed her postgraduate studies in 2002. Between 2000 and 2004 she studied at the Berlin University of the Arts holding a DAAD scholarship. She lives and works in Berlin and Tokyo.

Solo exhibitions (selection):

2006 May I Enter?, Galerie Alexandra Saheb, Berlin
2005 Raum 45, Schwäbisch Hall
2004 Galerie Alexandra Saheb, Berlin
Invisible Birds, Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo
2003 To Remember the Past Days More Exactly, Closetgallery, Halifax
Normal/Normal?, Dirt Gallery, Kansas City

Group exhibitions (selection):

2006 Sydney Biennale, Sydney
2005 Rooming-In (skupaj s Petrom Möllerjem), artMbassy, Berlin
2004 To remember the past days more exactly, B.15 B, Berlin
2002 Normal-life Osaka, StudioJ, Osaka
Gasag-Kunstpreis-Ausstellung 2ykgalerie, Berlin

www.alexandrasaheb.de/de/artists/takemura.html