The work of Leiko Ikemura It seems to emerge from a space between dream, memory, and landscape. Its figures and horizons don't merely represent what we see; they activate a kind of inner vibration, a sense of constant change, as if everything were in the process of transformation. In its paintings, drawings, and sculptures, the human body dissolves into mountains, seas, and skies, and the plant and animal worlds merge into hybrid creatures that blur any rigid boundaries between nature and humanity.
This Japanese artist, who has lived in Europe for decades, has built her own visual language where elements are mixed Eastern tradition, modern Western sensibility, and a deep ecological and spiritual awarenessHer animistic landscapes, her girls in metamorphosis, and her sculptures of protective rabbits speak to us of motherhood, grief, care, and vulnerability, but also of hope and possible futures. It is no wonder that, today, Ikemura is one of the most singular voices in international contemporary art.
Biography of Leiko Ikemura: from Tsu to Berlin via Seville and Switzerland
Born in 1951 in Tsu, in Mie Prefecture (Japan)Leiko Ikemura grew up near the coast, something that would forever mark her relationship with the horizon, the sea, and nature. Before dedicating herself entirely to artistic creation, she studied Spanish literature at Osaka University of Foreign Studies between 1970 and 1972, which already foreshadowed her early connection with Hispanic culture.
In the early seventies, Ikemura moved to Spain, where he studied at the Higher School of Fine Arts of Santa Isabel de Hungría in Seville Between 1973 and 1978, this period in Seville was key to consolidating his artistic training and to confronting his Japanese background with European art. Shortly after, in the late seventies, he moved to Switzerland, where he began his artistic career in a context very different from the Japanese and Spanish ones.
Since the 1980s, he has resided primarily in Germany. In Berlin, Ikemura has developed a fundamental part of his teaching and creative career. Between 1991 and 2011 she was a professor of painting at the Universität der Künste (UdK), one of the country's most important art institutions. Later, she would expand her academic experience as a visiting professor at Joshibi University of Art and Design in Japan, once again linking her two worlds.
Throughout his career, Ikemura has received sustained recognition. In 2001 he won the German Visual Arts Critics' Prize, awarded by the German Critics Association, and in 2008 she was awarded the August Macke Award in Hochsauerlandkreis, Germany. His works have been presented in top-level institutions such as the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the Kunstmuseum Basel, the National Art Center in Tokyo, and the MOMAT in the Japanese capital.
With dual Japanese and Swiss nationality, the artist currently lives and works between Berlin and CologneMaintaining one foot in the Germanic sphere and the other in an international arena that has led her to exhibit in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and the United States, this life journey, marked by migrations, language changes, and cultural clashes, runs through all her work like a recurring thread.
From the Japanese pictorial tradition to the mystical turn of Engadin
Leiko Ikemura's painting is immediately recognizable for its palette of soft, nuanced and often vaporous tonesThere is a clear resonance in her work of traditional Japanese painting by masters such as Sesshū, Itō Jakuchū, and Hokusai. Ikemura acknowledges her debt to this heritage, especially regarding the ability to synthesize forms, the sensuality of surfaces, and the importance of voids and shadows.
One of the ideas it takes from Japanese aesthetics is the fascination with the night, the twilight, and the darknessAccording to her, this aspect is frequently relegated in the Western canon, which is more focused on clear light and absolute visibility. In her canvases, the shadowy areas are not mere backgrounds, but spaces charged with energy, places where figures seem to slowly emerge or dissolve.
In the 1980s, some of his work still fell within a neo-expressionist context, characterized by more aggressive gestures and intense chromatic densities. However, at the beginning of the 1990s, Ikemura lived for almost a year in the Engadin Mountains, SwitzerlandAnd that retreat marked a turning point in her understanding of painting. The intimate and prolonged contact with the Alpine landscape led her to gradually abandon neo-expressionist codes and seek a more mystical and spiritual connection with the natural environment.
From that moment on, instead of focusing on demonstrating technical skills or highlighting obvious artistic content, he began to explore the relationship between the inner world and the images that appear on the canvasA very clear example of this stage are his works in the series Landscapes with Mount Fujiwhere the iconic mountain becomes a symbolic axis that supports a fluid terrain, halfway between memory and vision.
This shift towards a quieter but emotionally charged painting style is also the seed of his understanding of the landscape as something more than a representation of the outside world: it is a space where memory, body, nature and myth intertwine on a changing surface.
Motherscape at the Albertina in Vienna: motherhood, identity and change
One of the most ambitious exhibitions dedicated to Ikemura to date is “Motherscape” at the Albertina in ViennaOpen to the public until April 6, 2026. This exhibition brings together a wide range of luminous paintings, economical drawings and sculptures made from various materials, such as glazed terracotta, glass and bronze, to address themes of universal scope: femininity, change, identity or the relationship between humanity and nature.
The title “Motherscape” plays on the idea of a “landscape of motherhood,” a mental and emotional realm in which the Maternal strength is not limited to biological motherhoodRather, it is understood as a creative, nurturing, and transformative energy present in all living beings. From this perspective, motherhood ceases to be a role confined to a gender and becomes a metaphor for artistic imagination and the capacity to nurture, gestate, and bring forth new forms of life and thought.
The exhibition is organized into several sections that allow visitors to follow Ikemura's recurring motifs. Among these, the following stand out: hybrid beings that merge human bodies with elements of the landscapeevoking a close connection between people, animals, plants, and the environment. In these figures, the boundary between skin and earth, between hair and foliage, or between limbs and waves becomes porous.
The exhibition includes around forty works, including paintings, sculptures, and assemblages, and demonstrates Ikemura's interest in an expressiveness sustained both by the delicacy of chromatic nuances and the silent forcefulness of his sculptural forms. Motherhood appears again and again, but reinterpreted as vital force that permeates bodies and landscapesnot as a conventional image of mother and child in a domestic setting.
Landscapes as bodily rhythms and spaces in transformation
Within “Motherscape” and in her body of work, Ikemura’s landscapes do not conform to a classical conception of the genre. She herself describes them as “body rhythms and undulating movements that create spaces”Nature is not represented as something fixed in the face of an external gaze, but as an extension of one's own body and its heartbeats, breaths, and changes of state.
His paintings are full of translucent layers of color The overlapping layers create a sensation of living mist. The smooth transitions between light and shadow almost blur the figure and background, so that it is no longer clear where the body ends and the landscape begins. This blurring reinforces the idea of a fusion between interior and exterior.
Light and color ranges are fundamental when constructing these pictorial spaces. The use of gradients, glazes, and very subtle areas of color allows for the interplay between abstraction and figuration. are linked on the same surfaceWe do not find sharp outlines, but rather forms that are intuited, emerge, fold back or dissolve, generating a contained but constant dynamism.
In many of these scenes, the horizon is barely suggested, or it multiplies in undulating lines reminiscent of coastlines, mountains, or calm seas. The viewer's gaze oscillates between recognizing human features, profiles of girls or animals, and, at the same time, perceiving the whole as a continuous, almost organic landscape.
This way of understanding the landscape, deeply linked to the body and to change, is also in tune with an animistic vision of the world, where any natural element possesses its own interiority and energy. The painting thus becomes a field of forces rather than a window into a stable scene.
Female figures and the Girls section: vulnerability, desire for change, and evolving consciousness
One of the most striking sets of Ikemura's work is that of his female figures in the process of transformation, many of them grouped under the heading GirlsThese girls and young women are not portraits of specific people or naturalistic representations; rather, they function as embodiments of becoming, of uncertainty, of the desire for change, and of a state of mind in full turmoil.
The figures do not adhere to a closed physiognomy: often, their bodies appear half-dissolved, open, incomplete, or in transit. This lack of definition does not imply fragility in a negative sense, but rather a physical and emotional openness which reveals their vulnerability, their hope, and their expectations. They are not finished characters, but beings in progress, traversed by fluctuating emotions.
Within this group, several archetypes unfold, which Ikemura reinterprets in his own way. There is the primordial girlwhich never fully settles into a fixed form and remains in a constant state of gestation. There are also figures of girls or women who embody maternal potential beyond cultural roles, and others who adopt a high, almost spiritual, point of view, observing the world from above.
These latter figures, who observe reality from a certain distance, seem to function as silent witnesses to what is happening below: wars, ecological crises, social changes, and, at the same time, small gestures of care and resistance. In all these variations, the girls of Ikemura confront their surroundings head-on, even when their form is unstable.
In parallel, many of the sculptures that fall within the realm of the feminine depict reclining or withdrawn bodies, in a kind of interval between trauma and calm. They are not so much scenes of idyllic repose as images of that a moment of stillness that comes when the wave of pain recedes a littleThis is especially resonant in the post-pandemic era and in light of recent environmental disasters.
Constant becoming: open work, chance, and materials that “speak”
For Leiko Ikemura, a work is not considered definitively finished. According to her own conception, Each painting, each sculpture, and each drawing is part of a continuous processBecoming is not just a represented theme, but a working principle. His method is intense, physical, and intuitive, attentive to the reactions of materials and open to the intervention of chance.
In her sculptures, clay, bronze, or glass are not used as neutral supports that docilely obey the artist's will. Ikemura insists that she wants it to be the the material that takes the initiativethat “speaks” and guides her. The roughness of the clay, the transparency of the glass or the patina of the bronze decisively determine the final form, the surface and the expression of the figures.
Thus, the gradations of color, the refractions of light on the glass, the opaque areas and the highlights, along with the irregular textures, give the works a vibrant, almost pulsating presence. In parallel, the cracks, breaks and fingerprints They remain visible, recording the creative process as an inseparable part of the final piece. There is no erasure of the scars of the work, but rather a reclaiming of them.
In her drawings, pastels, and works on paper, this becoming manifests itself in the flow of lines, in motifs that emerge, dissolve, and reappear transformed. The forms are never completely closed; they are presented as hypotheses, as provisional states of something that could continue to change.
In summary, for Ikemura, gradual transformation is also a physical and bodily experienceThe artist's body, her gestures, her breath, all play a role in shaping each stroke, each imprint in the clay, or each layer of pigment. The work thus remains as a snapshot in a larger process that, in theory, could continue.
Essence: connections between humans, animals, and trees
Another key section of the exhibition at the Albertina, entitled Essence, brings together intertwined human, animal, and plant structureswhich point to a world in which everything is interconnected. Ikemura conceives of animals as “spiritual beings with their own emotional energy” and considers trees as organisms that often outlive many human generations, preserving a memory of time.
In this vein, his sculptures frequently adopt permeable forms, with voids that allow light and air to pass through. Many forms are not solid, but rather feature cavities or passages that incorporate the surrounding space as part of the work. This material permeability suggests a open coexistence between figure, light and environment, instead of an isolated object closed in on itself.
The rounded, soft silhouettes of many of these pieces are reminiscent of fruits, hills, seeds, or crouching animals. The aim is not so much to sculpt a precisely identifiable being, but rather to allude to natural configurations that seem capable of evolving in different directions. Once again, the motif of becoming lies beneath the surface.
In this context, the influence of a holistic worldview is evident: the human being does not appear as the absolute center, but as one more node in a complex network of relationships with fauna, flora and the elements. Spirituality here is not abstract; it manifests itself in the concrete form of the bodies and in their way of integrating with space.
Hybrid sculptures and the reclining body facing trauma
Among Ikemura's most recognizable sculptures are several figures with subtle colored patinas, many of them in reclining positionas if they were floating or sinking on the line of a liquid horizon. Four of these pieces—Double Figure, Cat Girl Lying Down, Lying girl y Cat Girl with Usagi— they have the appearance of a girl, but at the same time they resemble open flowers, plant bodies or animal beings.
These works reinforce the idea of fusion of nature, animals and plants in hybrid creatures that inhabit a common space. There is no sharp separation between the human and non-human realms; everything participates in a shared life cycle, in which bodies change form and function.
Instead of the usual supine position, the figures are shown face down or on their sides, sometimes with their hands clasped in front of their chests. When the hands do not cover the faces—something that, according to Ikemura herself, would serve to erase individual identity—they appear firmly joined, as in a gesture of contemplation or secular prayer.
Together, these reclining figures give form to a numinous moment of calmA moment of stillness that settles in after the "tide of trauma" recedes. It is not an idyllic paradise, but rather that fragile and uncertain period in which the damage has peaked but the future remains uncertain, a condition that many recognize after the global experience of the pandemic.
In several public displays—for example, on the waters of the southern lake of the Hemisfèric in the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia—these sculptures are placed on oval pedestals that make them appear floating figures between water and architectureThis installation, designed by architect Philipp von Matt, reinforces the feeling of suspension and transit.
Usagi Greeting and the large outdoor exhibition in Valencia
The City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia hosted one of Ikemura's most significant presentations in Spain. On this occasion, they showcased six sculptures of the artist, including the enormous Usagi Greeting, installed on the Hemisfèric lake until March 2022. The piece represents a hare-bodhisattva, understood as "mother of all existences", a protective figure with a marked spiritual component.
“Usagi Greeting” is a hybrid being, hollow inside, with an opening in the front of her skirt and long ears that act as antennas pointed towards the universeThe Buddhist connotations are intertwined with a contemporary imagery that connects the sculpture with the idea of transmission, listening, and care towards all forms of life.
Alongside this large, upright figure, other works were exhibited, such as Figure with Three Birds and the aforementioned four recumbent figures (Double Figure, Cat Girl Lying, Lying Girl y Catgirl with Usagi), all of them made of bronze with light colored patinas. The seemingly simple, but technically complex, assembly meant that the pieces rested on elliptical bases that made them appear to be suspended above the surface of the water.
This intervention was conceived within a commitment by the City of Arts and Sciences to the Public art and the dialogue between science, nature and creationThe free access allowed any visitor to unexpectedly encounter the sculptures, without needing to enter a museum, generating an open and everyday experience of contemplation.
This same set of works, under the title “HERE WE ARE”, has also traveled to other public spaces, such as Puerto Banús, in Marbella, in 2022, reinforcing the itinerant and expansive dimension of this family of hybrid sculptures.
Usagi Kannon: Nuclear Duel, Compassion, and the Cycle of Destruction and Creation
Among Ikemura's iconic pieces, the following stand out: Usagi KannonA monumental sculpture (in one of its variants, known as USAGI KANNON (340), 2012/24) that combines human and animal features with both Buddhist and Christian references. The work originated from an article about a Rabbit born with malformations due to a nuclear leak after the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 2011.
The figure, with rabbit ears and a tearful face, functions as a symbol of universal grief that is not limited to a national tragedy. It embodies concerns about the future of the planet, on the risks of uncontrolled technological development and on the shared vulnerability of humans and animals to environmental disasters.
At the same time, as a protective rabbit bodhisattva, Usagi Kannon embodies the idea of active compassion and protection for all creatures. The sculpture alludes simultaneously to suffering and the possibility of care, underscoring the cycle of destruction and creation that runs through the history of the Earth and human societies.
This work has had a notable presence in parks and public spaces from institutions such as the Sainsbury Centre Sculpture Park in Norwich, the Georg Kolbe Museum in Berlin or the Kunstmuseum Basel, reinforcing its role as a contemporary icon of mourning, memory and hope.
The Light on the Horizon: Exhibition at Heredium Museum, South Korea
At the Heredium Museum in Daejeon, South Korea, Ikemura is the star of the exhibition “Light on the Horizon”This is his first major exhibition in a Korean museum and the second contemporary solo exhibition presented by this institution, following a retrospective of Anselm Kiefer. Here, the theme of horizon, central to the artist's work.
The sea, present since his childhood in Tsu, reappears as a key symbolic setting. The exhibition mentions an episode in which, traveling by train on the Tokai Line, Ikemura contemplated the sea horizon once again with a special intensity, almost as if it were the first time. That vision became an indelible mark and a engine of imagination about other possible worlds beyond the line that separates sky and water.
Heredium features large paintings from the series of Cosmic-scapesas the BEFORE THUNDER & AFTER DARK (2014/17) or SINUS SPRING (2018). These works, created mainly in the 2010s, express a animistic worldview of Eastern origin, with backgrounds of seemingly infinite space and figures that cross the boundaries between human and animal.
The surfaces are worked with a wide variety of colors and natural materials such as hemp (nettle) or jute, enhancing the sensation of expanding and vibrating colored particles. The forms suggest interiors that cannot be grasped with the eye alone: there is an invitation to imagine what It is not visible but it can be sensed on the other side of the horizon.
The Heredium building itself, a former headquarters of the Oriental Development Company from 1922 restored as a multicultural complex, becomes part of the discourse: seeing Ikemura's work in a space charged with historical and colonial memory accentuates the idea of crossing between times and contexts, and of expanding the traditional limits of the museum.
Glass sculptures and new forms of hybridization
Since 2019, the glass sculptures These pieces have gained significant importance within Ikemura's visual language. They further explore the theme of hybridity, relating human bodies, animals, and natural forms through transparency and the refraction of light.
In these works, glass embodies the idea of crossing: the material allows light to pass through, traps it, multiplies it, and colors it, generating effects that change according to the viewer's position and the lighting. The artist has explained that, observing how the light is captured inside these sculptures, she felt a renewed sense of hope, as if those small radiant chambers were reservoirs of psychic energy.
The figures that emerge in the glass are usually hybrids: neither completely human, nor entirely animal, nor simple abstractions. They function as symbols of a fundamental coexistence between different types of life, in which no form imposes itself absolutely on the others.
These glass works also engage with the tradition of sacred or ritual objects, without literally reproducing them. Their brilliance, fragility, and ability to project color into the surrounding space reinforce the impression of being in the presence of objects that, while not merely figurative, are intensely charged with meaning.
Taken together, the glass sculptures expand Ikemura's formal repertoire and deepen his search for a poetics of interdependence between beings, elements and planes of visible and invisible reality.
Leiko Ikemura's exhibitions and international presence
Since the early 1980s, Ikemura's work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions worldwideIn addition to those already mentioned in Vienna, Basel, Tokyo, Daejeon or Valencia, it is worth highlighting exhibitions in institutions such as the Nordiska Akvarellmuseet in Skärhamn, the Deutsches Keramikmuseum Hetjens in Düsseldorf, the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno, the Museum of East Asian Art in Cologne or the Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum in Mishima.
In Spain, in addition to the intervention in the City of Arts and Sciences, the Caja Burgos Art Center (CAB) In 2021, she presented the exhibition “Even More Mornings,” which explored the day and night dimensions of her landscapes, as well as her metamorphosing female figures. Ikemura has also been included in projects such as the exhibition “ABSTRACTION / SIMULATION,” which placed her work in dialogue with other contemporary practices.
Her catalogues and interviews—produced by galleries and museums such as Galerie Michael Haas in Berlin, Galerie Samuel Lallouz, and Kunstmuseum Basel, among others—have helped to shape a substantial theoretical reflection around her practice, addressing issues of gender, cultural identity, migration, spirituality and ecology.
Ikemura's works are part of the collections of a long list of leading institutions: in addition to the MOMAT in Tokyo and the National Museum of Art in Osaka, they can be found in the Mumok (Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig) in Vienna, the Museum zu Allerheiligen in Schaffhausen, the Kupferstichkabinett of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the Takamatsu City Art Museum, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and many other public and private collections.
This strong international presence reinforces his position as an artist capable of articulating deeply local and, at the same time, universal discoursesSpeaking from her concrete biographical experience, she addresses problems that are prevalent in our time: the ecological crisis, migrations, the fragility of the body, the need for care, and the search for new forms of community.
Looking at Leiko Ikemura's work means entering a territory where human bodies merge with mountains, seas, flowers, and animals, where motherhood expands into a creative force that sustains life, and where every form is always on the verge of change. Among undulating landscapes, girls in transit, protective hares, and glass sculptures pierced by light, her work proposes a a more attentive, more open, and more compassionate way of being in the world, in which the boundary between nature and humanity dissolves in favor of a constantly moving network of links.