Ryoko SUZUKI (b. 1970, Sapporo) began her studies at the Musashino Art University Junior College of Art and Design (Japan) and the SOKEI Academy of Fine Arts & Design, from which she graduated in 1994.
Recipient of the 21st Higashikawa Special Prize (2005) and The Incentive Award of Art and Culture of the Hokkaido Bank Cultural Foundation (2006), she was also granted a scholarship by the Japanese Government Overseas Study Program for Artists (2007) and admitted to the Artist in Residence Program (Shanghai, 2009). She has exhibited individually at places such as the Museum of Contemporary Art (Sapporo); Rias Ark Museum of Art (Miyagi); Zeit-Foto Salon (Tokyo); Corkin Gallery (Toronto); Andrew James Art (Shanghai) and CAI02 (Sapporo).
Suzuki has participated in the Shanghai Biennale, (China, 2004) as well as numerous collective exhibitions, including Global Feminisms, Brooklyn Museum (NY, 2007); Art Basel (Switzerland, 2008); Another voice: We, Shanghai Art Museum (China, 2008); Portraits of a Water Vein: Contemporary Art in Japan, Korea and Germany, Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art (Sapporo, 2009); Domani: The Art of Tomorrow 2010, The National Art Center (Tokyo, 2010); Modernity Stripped Bare: Undressing the Nude in Contemporary Japanese Photography, The Art gallery, University of Maryland (USA, 2011); Work from the Hokkaido Bank Collection, Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art (Japan, 2012); The body, being here, Daegu Art Museum (Korea, 2013); Susukino Triennale, No.21 Keiwa Bil (Sapporo, Japan, 2014); Contemporary Photography and Video Artists of Hokkaido, Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art (Sapporo, 2015); RE-ACTION. Genealogy and countercanon, Universidad de Oviedo/Museo Barjola, Casal Solleric/Main Floor (Spain, 2015,2016) and Mapping the Body: The Body in Contemporary Life, Galerie im Taxispalais (Austria, 2016).
Her work is part of the Shanghai Art Museum collection; Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography; Mint Museum in North Carolina; Museum at American University; Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art; Higashikawa Culture Gallery; Art Gallery University of Maryland and Takahashi Collection.
“My work focuses mainly on themes of genre and desire and their respective social implications. Collaborating in RE-ACTION has represented quite a challenge for me, in the sense of stepping into the context of a project that was already constituted. It was therefore a work I had to appropriate in order to develop, from there, with the utmost freedom, my own work. The naked female body has been an icon of art from time immemorial, so there’s nothing strange in seeing it for the Nth, time in the works of Maurice Guibert. Every time I look at them I again feel the same repulsive energy caused by the harmful and discriminatory use of the female body as a sexual symbol. After thinking very carefully about how I could articulate my intervention within such a scheme of things, I decided to use my own body as support, thereby returning to myself, and with that to one of the themes I deal with on a daily basis: women and art.
In 2007, my series BIND was on display at the Brooklyn Museum of Arts, in the context of the exhibition entitled Global Feminisms. In that series I used pig's intestines, soaked in my own blood, to gag and rope off my body as a form of plastic protest, to try to express the binding and blinding that prevent women from developing their full potential in life. In that way, I could channel my desire towards freeing us from those shackles that still so oppress us, to put behind us the timeless weight of the myths that have kept us under siege all these years, and spread our wings and fly freely towards the common horizon of a new life.”
Ryoko Suzuki lives and works in Sapporo (Japan).
Recipient of the 21st Higashikawa Special Prize (2005) and The Incentive Award of Art and Culture of the Hokkaido Bank Cultural Foundation (2006), she was also granted a scholarship by the Japanese Government Overseas Study Program for Artists (2007) and admitted to the Artist in Residence Program (Shanghai, 2009). She has exhibited individually at places such as the Museum of Contemporary Art (Sapporo); Rias Ark Museum of Art (Miyagi); Zeit-Foto Salon (Tokyo); Corkin Gallery (Toronto); Andrew James Art (Shanghai) and CAI02 (Sapporo).
Suzuki has participated in the Shanghai Biennale, (China, 2004) as well as numerous collective exhibitions, including Global Feminisms, Brooklyn Museum (NY, 2007); Art Basel (Switzerland, 2008); Another voice: We, Shanghai Art Museum (China, 2008); Portraits of a Water Vein: Contemporary Art in Japan, Korea and Germany, Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art (Sapporo, 2009); Domani: The Art of Tomorrow 2010, The National Art Center (Tokyo, 2010); Modernity Stripped Bare: Undressing the Nude in Contemporary Japanese Photography, The Art gallery, University of Maryland (USA, 2011); Work from the Hokkaido Bank Collection, Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art (Japan, 2012); The body, being here, Daegu Art Museum (Korea, 2013); Susukino Triennale, No.21 Keiwa Bil (Sapporo, Japan, 2014); Contemporary Photography and Video Artists of Hokkaido, Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art (Sapporo, 2015); RE-ACTION. Genealogy and countercanon, Universidad de Oviedo/Museo Barjola, Casal Solleric/Main Floor (Spain, 2015,2016) and Mapping the Body: The Body in Contemporary Life, Galerie im Taxispalais (Austria, 2016).
Her work is part of the Shanghai Art Museum collection; Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography; Mint Museum in North Carolina; Museum at American University; Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art; Higashikawa Culture Gallery; Art Gallery University of Maryland and Takahashi Collection.
“My work focuses mainly on themes of genre and desire and their respective social implications. Collaborating in RE-ACTION has represented quite a challenge for me, in the sense of stepping into the context of a project that was already constituted. It was therefore a work I had to appropriate in order to develop, from there, with the utmost freedom, my own work. The naked female body has been an icon of art from time immemorial, so there’s nothing strange in seeing it for the Nth, time in the works of Maurice Guibert. Every time I look at them I again feel the same repulsive energy caused by the harmful and discriminatory use of the female body as a sexual symbol. After thinking very carefully about how I could articulate my intervention within such a scheme of things, I decided to use my own body as support, thereby returning to myself, and with that to one of the themes I deal with on a daily basis: women and art.
In 2007, my series BIND was on display at the Brooklyn Museum of Arts, in the context of the exhibition entitled Global Feminisms. In that series I used pig's intestines, soaked in my own blood, to gag and rope off my body as a form of plastic protest, to try to express the binding and blinding that prevent women from developing their full potential in life. In that way, I could channel my desire towards freeing us from those shackles that still so oppress us, to put behind us the timeless weight of the myths that have kept us under siege all these years, and spread our wings and fly freely towards the common horizon of a new life.”
Ryoko Suzuki lives and works in Sapporo (Japan).