Ai Kowada Gallery is going to present "Works 2009 - 2013" by Aki Inomata at One, Shanghai, China from Saturday May 25th to Friday June 21st. This exhibition consists of her main works during these five years. 

Aki Inomata produced, from a fresh and sensitive viewpoint as a woman, extraordinary works involving creatures such as parakeets, hermit crabs, turtles or bagworms. Holding her first solo exhibition abroad at The University of Vermont Fleming Museum in the US in 2011 and nominated at the 16th TARO Award in 2012, Inomata attracted keen attention and she was invited to a contemporary art TV program. Also, "girl, girl, girl...", her solo exhibition last year, provoked a powerful public response, as it focused on the question "What is femininity? " using bagworms' "bag" in cooperation with the fashion label VIVIENNE TAM.

Inomata, whose works showed unexpected appearance of creatures around us with full of humor, attempted to compare rules in our society or our culture, such as languages, borders or clothes, to those of other creatures. It would help us to look at our society and ourselves from a different angle, she believed. 

Inomata explained the reason she started to "cooperate with creatures." "Nowadays with highly advanced culture and civilization, the system or rules in our society is too complicated to understand how it works. It is a black box to most of us. That causes us suffocation, or even a feeling of hopelessness."
This solo exhibition shows Inomata's recent works grounded on a simple but essential question about our modern society.

Courtesy of Ai Kowada Gallery