Yamaguchi Ai
b. 1977, JapanAi Yamaguchi is a young Japanese artist whose work creates a fictitious world based on the lives of female courtesans working in brothels during Japan’s Edo period (1600-1868 AD). Yamaguchi has created nine imaginary characters - girls aged between nine and ten sold into prostitution by their improverished parents. She depicts them while off duty, capturing their expressions of worry, sadness and confusion.
Yamaguchi expresses the girls who live their lives as prostitutes and wait on the men in yukak, the red-light district. She draws the girls into the works using the original supports of hers and clear colors. Her works a rendered in a manner, which explores both fuzoku customs in the Edo-period, and her own eroticism. This rises a feeling of uneasiness in the viewer.
Stylistically, Yamaguchi’s work is inspired by the Ukiyo-e (“pictures of the floating world”) woodblock prints of the Edo period - which often glamorised the working lives of prostitutes - but is also influenced by contemporary Japanese Anime illustration.
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