Emi Uchida | 内田 江美
Biography
内田 江美｜Emi UCHIDA
Emi Uchida was born in Yamanashi Japan. Studied art with the Japanese painter Ando Mineko from the age of 8 until 2004 and graduated from the Women’s College of Art from 1988 to 1990. After graduating, she worked as a fashion designer from 1990-2003, then started her activity as an artist and is now active in the art scene in China, the United States, Europe, Turkey, and Singapore.
She has held solo exhibitions at Taipei 101 Tower Museum of Art in 2016, Miura Museum of Art (Ehime) in 2018, Kaohsiung City Government Cultural Affairs Bureau/Cultural Center (Taiwan) in 2018 and at Setouchi City Museum of Art (Okayama) in 2020.
Major exhibitions
2023 Matsuzakaya Ueno Art Gallery Traces of Line and Colour Tokyo-Japan
√K Contemporary “being-Mon is a woman” Tokyo-Japan
2022 JING ART Art Beijing Beijing-China
Nagano Tokyo Department Store Contemporary Masterpieces Exhibition Tokyo – Japan
2021 Shun art gallery progress Shanghai-China
2020 Tenmaya Fukuyama solo exhibition Hiroshima-Japan
Kaohsiung City Government Cultural Bureau Kaohsiung Cultural Center Exhibition Kaohsiung-Taiwan China
Setouchi-city art museum Intricate lines, colours and dispersion Setouchi City – Japan
2019 Art Taipei Taipei- Taiwan China
Anjou Corridor Group Exhibition Taichung Tichung-Taiwan China
Taipei New Art Expo Taipei- Taiwan China
Emi Uchida Solo Exhibition Soei Gallery Tokyo-Japan
ART FUTRUE Art Future Taipei- Taiwan China
2018 ART KAOHSIUNG ART FAIR Kaohsiung-Taiwan China
Emi Uchida Exhibition Trace-Colors and Lines of Heart-Miura Museum of Art Ehime Japan
Japan-France Contemporary Art Exhibition “Neo Japonisme – Résonances 2018” Provence- France
Taipei New Art Expo Taipei- Taiwan China
Uncle Iwane Gallery 2-person exhibition Okayama-Japan
Chengdu Aicho Museum “Wakaba Collection Japanese Youth Artist Group Exhibition” Chengdu-China
Kaohsiung City Government Cultural Bureau Kaohsiung Cultural Center 2 Building Emi Uchida Solo Exhibition Kaohsiung-Taiwan China
LA ART SHOW Los Angeles / USA
2017 Affordable Art Fair Singapore
Taipei New Art Expo Taipei-Taiwan China
2016 Taipei 101 GALLERY 101 Emi Uchida solo exhibition Taipei-Taiwan China
Galeria Punto Emi Uchida Solo Exhibition Hyogo-Japan
AAC-ACT ART COM – Art & Design Fair 2016 Tokyo-Japan
Taipei New Art Expo Taipei-Taiwan China
Affordable Art Fair Singapore
The Tolman Collection Solo Exhibition Tokyo-Japan
KURUM’ART contemporary Group Exhibition Tokyo-Japan
2015 ART KAOHSIUNG ART FAIR Kaohsiung-Taiwan China
Affordable Art Fair Hong Kong-China
The Tolman Collection Solo Exhibition Tokyo-Japan
Uncle Iwane Gallery 2-person exhibition Okayama-Japan
KURUM’ART contemporary Group Exhibition Tokyo-Japan
2014 Affordable Art Fair Singapore
Contemporary Istanbul 2014 Istanbul-Turkey
Salon du chocolat 2014 Collaboration with PATISSIER eS KOYAMA Paris-France
ART ELYSEES Paris-France
Art Fair Mexico Mexico City-Mexico
Worldwide Art Los Angeles Los Angeles-USA
Art Santa Fe Santa Fe-America
Uncle Iwane Gallery 2-person exhibiti Okayama-Japan
Niigata Mitsukoshi 3-person exhibition Niigata-Japan
“Emi Uchida Exhibition” Trace-June 2014-KURUM’ART Tokyo-Japan
Art Fair Tokyo 2014 Tokyo-Japan
“Emi Uchida Exhibition” HEIS Gallery Fukuoka-Japan
OFF Contemporary Art Fair Brussels Brussels-Belgium
Galeria Punto solo exhibition Hyogo-Japan
KURUM’ART contemporary Group Exhibition Tokyo-Japan
2013 Contemporary Istanbul 2013 Istanbul-Turkey
Art Fair 2013 Tokyo-Japan
D + 5 Fukuda Gallery 3-person exhibition Niigata-Japan
2012 Daegu Art Fair 2012 Daegu-South Korea
EMERGING DIRECTORS ’ART FAIR ULTRA005 exhibition Tokyo-Japan
Art Santa Fe 2012 Santa Fe-USA
“Tokyo Erotika” Exhibition 3 People Exhibition Vue Privèe Gallery Singapore
“Emi Uchida Exhibition” HEIS Gallery Fukuoka-Japan
“Mental image / 3 eyes” 3-person exhibition KURUM’ART contemporary planning Gallery YUKI-SIS Tokyo-Japan
“Hot & Cold” 3-person exhibition D + 5 Fukuda Gallery Niigata-Japan
Valentine Exhibition Vue Privèe Gallery Singapore
2011 Winter is coming Can spring be far behind? -Emi Uchida Solo Exhibition, Shun Art Gallery Shanghai-China
Taegu Art Fair Taegu-Korea
Young Artists Japan Vol.4 Tokyo-Japan
Art project in Honjima Island, Gallery ARTE Kagawa-Japan
If we hold on together-Charity auction for post 311earthquake&Tsunami Reconstruction in Japan
2011 Winter is coming Can spring be far behind? -Emi Uchida Solo Exhibition, Shun Art Gallery, Shanghai
Taegu Art Fair, Korea
Young Artists JapanVol.4, Tokyo Japan
Art project <the summer moon>in Honjima Island, Gallery ARTE, Kagawa Japan
If we hold on together-Charity auction for post 311earthquake&Tsunami Reconstruction in Japan
2010 Young Artists Japan Vol.3, （received a prize）Tokyo Japan
Art project in Honjima Island, Gallery ARTE, Kagawa Japan
Henan art museum international art exhibition, China
Public collection, Henan art museum, China
Beijing Studio Center Artist in Residence, Beijing
Two person’s Exhibition, Hankyu Umeda Department store,Osaka Japan
Art Fair Tokyo 2010, Japan
2009 Vermont Studio Center Artist in Residence, USA
Contracted with Onishi gallery and solo Exhibition,Chelsea,New York
Young Artists Japan 2009 Autumn,Tokyo Japan
Ziani Art Auction, Singapore
Collection Private Museum, Singapore
Young Artists Japan 2009, Tokyo, Japan
NigataMistukosi Department store,Nigata Japan
2008 Konpira Art 2008, Kanagawa, Japan
Contracted with Onishi gallery and solo Exhibition,Chelsea,New York
With Anjin Abe, Two person’s Exhibition Hankyu Umeda Department store, Osaka
Katachi21 Group Exhibition, Tokyo Japan
2007 WithAnjin Abe, Contemporary Art Two Person’s Exhibition,
Onishi gallery, Chelsea, New York
2006 WithAnjin Abe and Kunihiro Kondo, Group Exhibition,
Hankyu Umeda Department store, Osaka Japan
2005 Worked closely with Anjin Abe
First solo Exhibition, Gallery P(A), Yamanashi Japan
Impression
A New Cosmos Born of Obliteration
Yoshio Kato
Independent curator
The work of Emi Uchida first came to my attention about a year ago. I encountered it at a contemporary art exhibition that I curated on the island of Shikoku, Kompira Art 2008 Toramaru Shachu. Uchida was among 13 individual artists and 1 collaborative unit that exhibited works in a traditional Japanese inn, the Toramaru. Each exhibitor had a guest room of their own to present their work in the manner of a one-person show.
Kototohira, the town where Kompira Art 2008 Toramaru Shachu took place, bears the name of a patron deity of seafarers. An eponymous shrine dedicated to that deity has attracted numerous worshippers from throughout Japan for hundreds of years. The shrine and town have been especially popular with authors and artists since the Edo period (1603 to 1868).
Uchida deployed in her room at the inn a memorable installation. She hung abstract paintings on the walls and arrayed Japanese cushions on the tatami-mat floor, and a procession of tiny kewpie dolls stretched over the cushions and out into the hallway.
Especially striking were Uchida’s paintings. From a distance, they offered the appearance of intermingled planes of color. But on closer inspection, they revealed a dense interplay of lines suggestive of a network of nerve cells. Accompanying the overlapping of lines were brief swatches of red, blue, yellow, and other colors.
The impression conveyed by the painted surfaces was of space exploding into infinity. Here were the neural networks of the human body connecting with the unbounded expanses of the universe and transporting with them the viewer. The familiar segued spectacularly into the ineffable.
Uchida titled the painting series Trace. “I use an eraser to delete what doesn’t sit right with me or seems somehow wrong,” she writes. “And when I can’t erase something completely, I obliterate it with lines. That’s a way of rejecting the past. And the remnants of the past rejected sometimes assume an interesting form.”
Thus does rejection and obliteration by the artist spawn new content. Continual destruction was a mode of creation for the 20th-century masters Matisse and Picasso, and Uchida reminds us anew of the artistic potential of creative destruction.
In Uchida’s most-recent works, we find collages and drawings reminiscent of the shunga erotic works of Edo-period ukiyoe woodcut artists. “I have long been a fan of rakugo [a comical-storytelling entertainment that became popular with townspeople during the Edo period]. And that drew my attention to other elements of Edo-period popular culture, such as shunga.” Although shunga could be notoriously explicit, the artists sometimes obscured the sexual depictions in a way that resonates with Uchida’s erasing and over-painting.
Uchida also rejects the past, she explains, by adding charcoal-drawn lines to surfaces of otherwise-finished works. That, too, casts the works in a curious new light. The shunga-like images fade beneath Uchida’s organically linear meshes, as if the artist had placed them behind a reed blind. Her technique stimulates our curiosity about what is going on behind the mesh of lines.
Emi Uchida is an artist who continues to augment her palette with new approaches to rejection and obliteration. She offers a refreshing take on the familiar avant-garde method of burying outmoded ideas and building atop them a new artistic edifice. Let us look forward to the cosmic architecture that will emerge in the evolving oeuvre of this uniquely new-old artist.
