In this Episode of Art is Awesome, Host Emily Wilson spends time with Japanese multimedia artist Masako Miki.
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area.
In this episode Emily interviews artist Masako Miki, whose solo exhibition "Midnight March" is on view at the ICA San Francisco through December 7th. Masako discusses her journey from Osaka, Japan to California, her fascination with Japanese folklore—especially the "Night Parade of 100 Demons"—and how these stories inspire her colorful felted sculptures. The conversation explores themes of animism, transformation, and protest, as well as Masako’s creative process and the importance of art in shifting perspectives. Tune in to hear about her artistic influences, the significance of her studio, and the playful yet profound characters she brings to life.
About Artist Masako Miki :
As a multimedia artist, Masako Miki navigates diverse mediums, including textile sculpture, watercolor, and outdoor public installations to explore the intersection of mythology, folklore, and contemporary social issues. Miki has exhibited her immersive felt sculptural installations and watercolor works on paper in the US, and internationally. She has exhibited at institutions including Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and de Young Museum. Inspired by Shinto’s animism, Miki attempts crafting new mythologies concerning cultural identity as social collectives. Miki was a recipient of the 2018 Inga Maren Otto Fellowship Award from Watermill Center in New York, also has been a resident artist including de Young Museum and Facebook HQ. Miki’s work is in collections at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Colección Solo in Spain, The Byrd Hoffman Water Mill Foundation, Facebook, Inc., and Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Miki’s monumental outdoor public art installation at Uber HQ in San Francisco and OH Bay cultural coastal park in Shenzhen China is on view. She is currently working on Mina and Natoma Street Corridor Project with SFMOMA and SFAC designing functional sculptures. Miki is a native of Japan and currently based in Berkeley, California. She is represented by RYANLEE Gallery in New York and Jessica Silverman Gallery in San Francisco.
Visit Masako's Website: MasakoMiki.com
Follow Masako on Instagram: @MasakoMiki
Learn More about Masako's exhibit "Midnight March" at the ICA SF through December 7 - CLICK HERE.
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About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:
Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women’s Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.
Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil
Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast
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CREDITS:
Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson.
Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions.
For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com
Host Emily Wilson: [00:00:00] Art is Awesome can now be heard on KSFP 102.5 FM every Friday at 9:00 AM and 7:00 PM Please follow the show and rate us wherever you get your podcast media. If you like what you hear from today's artist, you can find links and information about them in our show notes.
Artist Masako Miki: The setting really kind of puts you in a, different sort of a state of mind. I think that's very important because I strongly believe that art can shift our ideas.
Host Emily Wilson: That's Masako Miki, the guest on this week's Art is awesome.
I’m your host, Emily Wilson. I'm a writer in San Francisco, often covering the arts, and I've been meeting such great people [00:01:00] that I created this biweekly podcast to highlight their work.
Masako Micki was born in Osaka. When she was 18, she came to Belmont to go to Notre Dame University for a BFA. Then she got her MFA at San Jose State. Masako has done residencies at Montalvo Art Center in Saratoga, Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, the De Young Museum in San Francisco, and one in Tokushima, Japan.
Her work is in collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Berkeley Art Museum in Pacific Film Archive and Colion Solo. Madrid Masako is a painter, but now she's also known for her colorful felted wall sculptures. Those are on display at the ICA San Francisco in Masako solo presentation, midnight March on view through December 7th.[00:02:00]
It's based on the Night Parade of 100 Demons, a myth going back to the eighth century in which beings called Yokai or shapeshifters were rioting and people hid inside in fear. As a kid, Masaka was fascinated by the story, which was not only tied to religion, but showed up in popular culture such as comics and animation.
We met at the ICA with walls painted like the night sky, and dozens of the tufted wool figures with names like Sentient Ole and Ancient Tree Witness.
Artist Masako Miki: The original setting that I've been exploring is the Night Parade was the hundred demons, and that's a traditional theme in a Japanese folklore. Many well-known. Japanese artists have been making a painting. There's a lot of [00:03:00] anonymous painters as well, but paintings exist from like 14 hundreds and it's been sort of passed on to the generations and ed period.
And also of course, like modern and contemporary artists. It's a kind of a theme. It's basically about the shapeshifters and the protest march.
Host Emily Wilson: Though the story is ancient, Masako thinks it's still relevant.
Artist Masako Miki: There's this marching. People are actually trying to fight for their existence in a different context and different time.
But I feel we still kind of dealing with this idea about systematic prejudice and, and equity and, and anything. And then it's all based on the narrative and story and myth that we've created. So I wanted to present this as an actual protest march, like in a scroll and painting that I've been making.
Host Emily Wilson: Masaka worked with ICA director Ali Gass and curator [00:04:00] Meghan Smith, on making the show feel as though visitors were part of the march. They also wanted to paint the walls a dark color like a painting Masako did of the march.
Artist Masako Miki: I thought it was a really interesting idea to bring out this. Idea that's maybe unpleasant or something that's more darker side of my ideas and theme that I'm trying to explore.
So the setting, I think it really helps to bring that. Kind of a little bit of the, it's a different sort of way of like putting in a very bright white room.
Host Emily Wilson: Masako talked about the groupings in the first part of the show. When you come down the stairs, the characters come from the text as well as when she invents or reinvents.
Artist Masako Miki: I call them shapeshifters. And basically based on the idea about animism and Shinto animism, so everything in the universe has a spirit, like a spirituality to it. [00:05:00] So many of the characters are discarded objects. And sometimes it's an animal, sometimes it's a natural object. So this grouping I have, this is the shapeshifter of the sound, and this is the shapeshifter of water drop from ancient time.
And it, it kind of makes you a little bit smile and even laugh a little bit. And this is the pine tree. And that's a horse, and that's a Rolly Poly
Host Emily Wilson: Masako started doing needle felting about 10 years ago. First on a small scale and now much larger.
Artist Masako Miki: I was very attracted to the materials because it's such a household material that's really, it's not didactic and a lot of craft people use them and I think that's one of [00:06:00] the reason why that I think it.
Makes sense was my work because it's really about this transformation of some of these mundane characters and they're in, in, in the folk club. They marginalized the population, but they'll rising together. Being in the protest,
Host Emily Wilson: Masaka created bright orange, pink, purple, and multicolored shapeshifters,
Artist Masako Miki: I feel it's very important that I use this really bright and also playful and fun colors 'cause there's something more that I want to talk about it. And also, many of the traditional shape shifting, like a ghost imagery and Japanese folklore comic, they're, they're a little bit more grotesque and achromatic. I'm trying to reinvent something here, so it has to be new characters.
Host Emily Wilson: Not being able to see makes it easier to imagine. Masako says.
Artist Masako Miki: I really felt [00:07:00] like the, the night setting and the, the stars, and I think this dark setting really kind of brings to a little bit more personal place where it's hard to contemplate nowadays. Like I'm, I'm just constantly working on emails, a Zoom meeting productions, and this is, I feel like a museum and then gallery.
I feel like it's almost like a shrine or temple or like in a Western idea. It's a cathedral, the, or the church. And I think in the sense that this is a place where that you can kind of reconnect and reflect about maybe your life, starting with what are, what are they doing here, you know, and then maybe going to the history and then maybe going about your, your histories.
And so that, I feel like the. The setting really kind of put you in a, a different sort of a [00:08:00] state of of mind and I think that's very important because I strongly believe that art can shift our ideas.
Host Emily Wilson: Masako left Japan when she was just 18 to come to California for school. She says her father an antique dealer, got her interested in other cultures.
Artist Masako Miki: He was born in 1947, so it's two years after World War II ended it. So at the time, people just. They had nothing. Nobody had anything. So at the time it was very, uh, common to, you know, the people become like apprentices or like people just like, you know, live and work. My father did that to survive. He ended up working for this furniture company, working with artists.
Because of that job, he did a travel, overseas, internationally, and told me [00:09:00] a lot of story about like different countries. Yeah, so I was very aware. I loved the story, but we had the globe and he'll point, like what he has been. And as a young child, I did know that there is something outside of Japan and that's very different.
And it, to me, that was very exciting to hear that people live in different countries and different cultures.
Host Emily Wilson: Masako's mother wanted her to play the piano, and she did, but she quit to focus on drawing, which she loved.
Artist Masako Miki: I did like a comic because I'm Japanese. You know, I had the girlfriends who we actually made a comic and we passed around the story.
So every week we have like comic art, like here's the next chapters, you know, so, so we did that. So was very interested in painting. I asked my mother when I was a seventh grade, I asked the oil painting [00:10:00] tutor and she said, I can't afford just one person. So we did it as a group.
Host Emily Wilson: This is three questions. The part of the show where I ask the guests the same three things, when did you know you were an artist? What's some work that had an impact on you, and what's the most creatively inspiring place in the Bay Area?
Artist Masako Miki: I think to have this kind of like a self confirmation as an artist. I think that's when I went to graduate school, I've always been an artist, but I didn't connect. My desire as a sort of more kind of a realistic kind of a option. Like, you know, being an artist is like crazy. Like why? That's like the profession that you don't wanna choose,[00:11:00]
you know, but I the undergraduate. I went to small liberal school and I actually did a study with the California plein air painter and I learned so much, and to me it was just a field was this joy and also the art was a communication tool for me. 'cause I didn't speak any English. I had friends because I was able to draw and paint.
I wasn't great, but I was there all the time, so, so I just maybe it was good that I was young and reckless and naive that I said I'm just gonna paint forever. Um, but it was a big commitment. Going to graduate school as a fine art major.
It's very popular artist, [00:12:00] but I was very moved by, uh, Isamu Noguchi’swork. Not necessarily his sculpture sculptures. They're great, but I'm very interested in his. Uh, play Mountain, the Park Design, and, uh, I visited the, uh, Numa Park, which is in Hoka. In Sapporo. It's one of the largest park that became Real Park because he had so many drawings about Play Mountain Ideas, but it didn't happen because of all this liability issues, you know, his play equipment.
The city of New York in the sixties, they needed to have instruction. How do you play with it? And he's like, there's no instruction for this. You have to apply yourself. And so the, the park and stuff. I was very moved by this idea of synthesis of nature and art. And, [00:13:00] uh, the park is very plain.
Again, you need to apply yourself to make this meaningful moment. So it was a good. Big invitations and I visited with my husband and I had the best time. We were like a child and we were like 40 something, you know? But we spoke no words, which we made with snowman. We climb up this play mountain.
There's like a big hills always in his park, and it was just a beautiful moment. I thought it was really, it was kind of healing.
I think it's hard to pinpoint, but I have to say my studio, because my studio is very sacred. I take care of [00:14:00] it. I clean, I have no judgment when I'm in a studio. And I have success and failure and the work in that space. And, uh, I feel like it's very creative because I make anything happen in the place.
So in that sense, I think in my studio is very creative space because I made it that way.
Host Emily Wilson: Thank you so much to Masako Miki, our guest on today's Art is Awesome. Her show Midnight March is at the ICA in downtown San Francisco on Montgomery Street. It's on view through December 7th. Next year, the exhibition will travel to the MassArt Art Museum in Boston. And thank you for [00:15:00] listening. Please follow the show and join us in two weeks.
Art is Awesome Is a biweekly podcast coming out every other Tuesday. It's created and hosted by me, Emily Wilson. It is produced and edited by Charlene Gotto of Gotto Productions. It's carried on KSFP, LP 102.5 FM San Francisco on Fridays at 9:00 AM and 7:00 PM Our theme music is provided by Kevin McLeod with Incompetent Music.
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