Yoshimi Futamura (born in 1959 in Nagoya, Japan) is a ceramic artist living and working in Paris. Inspired by the elemental forces of nature, her sculptures draw on organic forms reminiscent of roots, rhizomes, or telluric flows, blending vegetal and geological references. She uses a mixture of stoneware clay and granular porcelain, both raw and fired, to create rounded pieces that seem to be of both vegetal and geological origin. These powerful and sensitive works embody a tension between structure and collapse, between raw material and refinement. Yoshimi creates her ceramics in the pure tradition of the great Japanese masters, embracing all the possibilities inherent in this millenary art. Over the years, she has developed iconic series such as Roots, Rhizomes, and Earth Waves, confirming her unique place in the contemporary ceramic sculpture landscape. In 2004, Futamura won first prize at the Ceramic Art Biennale in Andenne. She exhibited in 2011 at the Musée Ariana in Geneva, Switzerland, and in 2014 at the Bruno Lussato and Marina Fédier Institute in Brussels, Belgium. In 2016, Futamura presented the exhibition Collapse/Rebirth in New York. Her work is part of numerous collections, including those of the University of Michigan Museum of Art (USA), Shimoda City Museum (Shizuoka, Japan), World Ceramic Exposition Foundation (Korea), Museum Boijmans van Beuningen (Rotterdam, Netherlands), and the Foundation of Ateliers d’Art (France). Image : Yoshimi Futamura in her atelier. Paris, March 6th 2024 © Michel Lunardelli |
