Kaeko Mizukoshi (born in 1976 in Tokyo) graduated from Tama Art University in 2005 and continued her study at The State Academy of Fine Arts Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main in 2007-2008. She is a recipient of a fellowship from Asian Cultural Council (ACC) as well as grants from the Agency for Cultural Affairs (Bunkacho) and Yoshino Gypsum Art Foundation. She was working in New York between the years 2009 and 2013 and participated in Residency Programs of International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) and Location One. The artist currently lives and works in Tokyo.
Recent shows include "Nostalgia -East Asia Contemporary Art Exhibition" The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Shanghai (2012); "Yebisu International Festival for Arts & Alternative Visions: Day Dream Believer!!!" the Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo (2011); "Nicolas Grospierre and Kaeko Mizukoshi" Location One, New York (2009); “DELIRIUM”(Solo) Shisheido Gallery, Tokyo (2007).
Mizukoshi’s photo and video works not only have the quality of eye-catching visual composition but also explore the function of image and reconsider historiography by intervening the historical records. "Goete-Haus", the video work first presented at Yebisu International Festival for Arts & Alternative Vision in 2011, was set in the museum, which was originally Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s birthplace but burned down in WWII and newly-reconstructed at the same location after the war. The film goes on with the actors in 18th Century costume that artist placed. Here, in the process from the restoration of the building to the film, many different points of view interfered toward the “original”. The film debates the position of the “original” within the records and it reminds us that all the histories we have recorded were inevitably intervened by someone’s perspective. Reexamining historical perception, her work brings up the question of uncertainty within our collective memory as well as authenticity of photography and film that cannot record outside of its frame.
The new photographic series presented in the exhibition “Images in the Process of Being Documented” takes pre-existing imagery of Japan (mainly from the 50’s and 60’s) in order to record the “present” and form a new documentary. Images appropriated are first transformed into B&W photocopy and then re-photographed by multiple- exposure of film. The transformation adds a new structure to the image, which once functioned as a document of the past, and likewise her previous works, these altered images raise perceptive observation to the present in a relation to historiography.
*image (left)
© Kaeko Mizukoshi
courtesy of the artist and NANZUKA