The View from Abbatoir　Oil on Canvas　2024

The Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels introduces to you “Human Animals” by Matsushita Mariko.
Matsushita has been recognized internationally for her paintings and other forms of artistic expression that chases the pain of being alive, sexuality, and the question of “what humans are”.
“Human Animals” is an exhibition that delves into a new abyss of thoughts by removing the line between what is known as “human” and what is known as “animal”

This is the first showing of her new pieces that include paintings, large-scale installations using used bedsheets, drawings, and the notebook that she used while traveling.
Matsushita was in Palestine right before the airstrikes started and is one of the artists who has been responding most profoundly for this matter in Japan ever since the genocide begun.

After engaging with Matsushita’s “The color beyond the cage” at The Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels, viewers should encounter an epiphany, a feeling that the world is different.

“Who is called human” is also, when an animal is trapped in a narrow cage. If you could see a flickering glance of light beyond the cage. That might remind you of the first color that you ever opened your eyes for, when you first came into this world.

Matsushita Mariko
Born in Suita City, Osaka Prefecture, Japan, in 1980.
Matsushita began writing numerous poems as her first form of expression in early childhood, to cope with and comprehend sexual violence.
She decided to pursue art without words, seeking to explore truth and an “external faucet” .
In 2004, she graduated with a degree in oil painting from the Kyoto City University of Arts.
While working at a factory, she resumed painting. Her body of work including Margarita 7 won the Grand Prix at the 2nd CAFFA 2016 (Contemporary Art Foundation Artist Award).
The next year, during the residency at the Delfina Foundation in London, she interacted with female artists from India, Peru, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and so forth. She later visited Auschwitz and the Red House in the Philippines among others, where she produced paintings.
In 2020, she publicized In the Honest Word of Love, inspired by Svetlana Alexievich, and in 2021, The Human Voice, including Friday, named after J.M. Coetzee’s book, making an important turning point.
In 2022, she independently organized a two-person exhibition, “Life,” with Amapola Prada (lives and works in Lima, Peru).
She was in the occupied Palestinian West Bank from July to August 2023.

Main solo exhibition
2023　”All Reflected in the Water” Ken Nakahashi, Tokyo
2021　”Human Voice” Contemporary Art Foundation, Tokyo
2020　”In the Honest Word of Love” GINZA ATRIUM, GINZA TUTAYA BOOKS, Tokyo
2020　”Anökumene: Land exiled as uninhabitable” KEN NAKAHASHI, Tokyo
2018　Drawing Exhibition
　　　 “Silent Resistance to Oblivion KEN NAKAHASHI, Tokyo
2016　“IDO” matchbaco, Tokyo

The View from Abbatoir 2　Oil on Canvas　2024

Little Humans, Red　Acrylic on Cardboard　2023

Travel notes　Old paper, Flowers　Aug, 2023