ABOUT
Biography
Born in Japan, Artist IBUKI KURAMOCHI specializes in artworks for exhibition
(paintings and media arts),
and also specializes in live performances combining her live painting with her Japanese Butoh dance.
From 2012, Ibuki started exhibiting works in major cities in Japan, U.S.A.,Taiwan, France, Italy and Australia.
She studied Butoh dance at the world renown Kazuo Ohno Butoh Dance Studio in Yokohama in 2016.
Through her work, she pursues the physicality of Butoh’s poetic choreography and the pursuit of the human body in anatomy.
She visualizes her performance and body movements as two-dimensional works and video works.
Ibuki explores concepts of the body, thought and physical resonance, metamorphosis,
Femininity and fetishism.
In 2019, Ibuki received a USA O-1 artist visa.
She currently resides in Los Angeles.
Artist Statement
I have few experiences of sleeping comfortably at night, and I often have nightmares which I remember well after waking up. Most of the nightmares are like a strange, violent and weird film.
I believe that these dream experiences have directly influenced my work, and that the visual experiences that I see every night are inevitably the essence of my work.
Also, in my dream experience, the "Id" in Sigmund Freud is exposed.
(The Id is the primitive and instinctive component of personality. It consists of all the inherited, ((i.e. biological components of personality present at birth)), including the sex ((life)) instinct – Eros ((which contains the libido)), and the aggressive ((death)) instinct - Thanatos.)
When I’m creating a video, I consciously discover my own "Id" and output it.
In the case of creating my paintings, I subconsciously discover my own "Id" and output it. That process feels like swimming.
These subconscious and conscious extracted "Id" have a consistent physicality.
I can say that my video work represents the output of Id’s body sensation ,and my painting work represents the output of Id’s brain sensation.
Physicality exists in various parts of our daily lives.
The chair you always sit in, the clothes you wrap around, the world of SNS on your smartphone, the bed where you sleep at night, etc.
The more conscious you are, the more you can see that the world is built around physicality.
Also, since I grew up in the Japanese anime culture of the 90's, I also take inspiration from the human physicality of anime.
Most of the drawings I drew when I was a child, were anime female figures such as Sailor Moon.These two-dimensional bodies have a human-like appearance, are durable, unabated and very rigid. There is not much distinction between boys and girls.
I’m also inspired by things that involve sexuality such as masculine and feminine, transformation, meltability, and compatibility.
Also, the sorcerous elements and attachments in fetishism are like stretching the desires of the body. Sometimes things become a substitute for the body.
Also life and death come and go on the side of that fetishism / eroticism.
For example, the mind and the body move between the membranes, or the body escapes from the body and materializes.