Works by Midori Harima
on view in the South Gallery from June 7 - August 5, 2023
This is a Mirror, an exhibition of work by Midori Harima, will be on view in the South Gallery of the Shirley Fiterman Art Center from June 4 through August 5, 2023. Harima’s installation will feature video, photography, printmaking and sculptural works that investigate aspects of originality and reproduction, ephemerality and permanence, and consumption and value systems.
Harima is a Japanese artist currently based in Kanagawa, Japan. She lived in the U.S. for 16 years, residing first on the West Coast and then moving to New York City, returning to Japan in 2017. Through living in the U.S., Midori found a “plurality of self,” redefining her concept of “I” as not one, but multiplicity. This thought process led to her increasing interest in printmaking, which became the basis for her video work This is a Mirror, after Camnitzer. Her title is a reference to “This is a Mirror, You Are a Written Sentence” from 1966-68, by Luis Camnitzer, a noted printmaker and pioneer of conceptual art.
A print is created through the contact between two things – a plate or a screen and a sheet of paper, and for Harima the essence of that process reflects the state of being a foreigner.
From May 2015 to April 2016, Harima saved all the non-perishable garbage she generated each day. Each evening, she used the refuse to create a sculpture that she then photographed and documented. Through this project, which she subsequently titled Democracy Demonstrates, Harima created a diary of her daily life. In photographing these 366 works, she also created a kind of self-portrait that simultaneously illustrates universal patterns of consumption. Midori treats trash as a material that is just as valuable and viable as any other — and in this sense presents a “democratic” approach to aesthetics, as well as a means of questioning our own hierarchies and value systems.
Midori Harima (b.1976, Yokohama, Japan) received a B.A. in oil painting and printmaking from Joshibi University of Art and Design in Kanagawa, Japan in 2000. She spent 16 years in the U.S., first living on the West Coast and later relocating to New York City. In 2017 she returned to Japan and spent the following year in Hong Kong on an artist’s research grant provided by the Japanese government. Harima has exhibited at the Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, CA; Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto, Japan; Fujisawa City Art Space, Japan; Deitch Studios, NY; and Honey Space, NY. She has participated in numerous residencies including Art Omni, NY; MMCA Goyang, South Korea; and 18th Street Art Center, Santa Monica. Harima lives and works in Kanagawa, Japan.
