Kei Takemura Japan, b. 1975

Kei Takemura is a Tokyo-based artist who was born in Tokyo in 1975 and has received international acclaim after studying art at the Berlin Art Academy under Professor Lothar Baumgarten after majoring in painting at the Tokyo National University of Fine Art and Music. She prints fragments of spaces and objects destroyed by natural disasters she has often undergone from childhood such as typhoons and earthquakes, unexpected accidents, or mistakes on a large piece of paper or cloth. She then works on recovering or renovating spaces and conditions by drawing or sewing on layers of tracing paper or silk cloth. While needlework has long been associated with cure and recovery as in sewing a cloth or sewing up a wound, broken pottery cannot properly regain its function no matter how dexterous a potter is. Her act of embroidering the memories of no longer existing objects and places is to temporarily recollect her memories of irreversible moments. We cannot turn back the clock. And yet, wounds will be left behind as the beauty of a new concept.