MAHOMI KUNIKATA

Mahomi Kunikata’s work is deeply personal and psychological. Heavily influenced by the otaku culture of sexually explicit manga, Kunikata’s work adopts the genre’s conventions to explore and communicate issues of abandonment, masochism, and depression. Often filling notebook after notebook with nightmarish depictions of cruelty, Kunikata’s personal drive to produce drawings overpowers the careful, methodical approach necessary to produce a professional comic work. The result is raw, powerful, and confronting. Art critic Midori Matsui writes, “Embodying the darker side of the adolescent psyche, Kunikata reveals the regressiveness of contemporary Japanese society caught in its cycles of infantile play, while at the same time her visceral response to its chaos provides a way beyond its abject lack of meaning.” Introduced to the art world through Takashi Murakami’s GEISAI event and its precursor Geijutsu Döjö, Kunikata has shown her work in several group exhibitions internationally, including Little Boy at the Japan Society in New York in 2005 and J’en Rêve at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris in 2005. Her work has been exclusively featured at NADA Art Fair (Miami, 2005), GEISAI #9 (Tokyo, 2006), and VOLTAshow02 (Basel, 2006).