Maki Kaoru

About

Japanese, b. 1977   —   Maki’s work explores perceptual responses to natural phenomena by destabilizing the notion of visual reality. Using photography and installation, she works on the idea of redefining and transforming the natural phenomena through direct and sensory experience. Perceptual anomalies, such as mirror, window, plexiglass, and the ways in which they create paradoxical illusion have become primary subjects of her work. Maki came to United States from Japan, by herself, at age of sixteen. After completing her M.F.A., she moved to New York where she was commissioned to produce her first large-scale public artwork, a 265 foot-long photograph, at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s space in Tribeca in 2011. While Maki is based in New York, she often travels and photographs in the remote islands in Europe and Asia, using underwater and medium-format film cameras. Recently, she has participated in several artist-in-residency programs in Iceland where she continues to work on projects. Maki exhibited at Tucson Museum of Art (USA), Lite-Haus Galerie (Berlin), Spiral (Tokyo), ISE Cultural Foundation (New York), Harvard University (Boston), Newspace Center for Photography (Oregon). She received awards and residency programs including Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (Omaha), Flux Factory (New York), New York Foundation for the Arts (New York), CENTER (Santa Fe), Hyeres Festival de Photograhie (France), SIM Residency (Iceland) and The Scandinavian- Japan Sasakawa Foundation (Sweden).