Leiko Ikemura—de sensu

Starting from a state of uncertainty, Ikemura explores the possibility of reorienting oneself in a world marked by change. Sharpening the senses appears here as a process of searching and rediscovering—an awakening of awareness toward one’s own environment.

The spatial design of the exhibition is defined by three green figures—›Green Baby,‹ ›Green Mom,‹ and ›Dear Spirit.‹ Green walls and lighting accents in yellow and dark blue create an atmosphere reminiscent of the transition from day to night, evoking the cycle of becoming and passing away. The figure ›mamagirl‹ seems to accompany this threshold as a watchful presence.

With her new sculpture ›Milk Lady,‹ Ikemura further develops her exploration of care, transformation, and renewal. The figure absorbs energy within itself and releases it as nourishment for new life. In this way, the exhibition unfolds as a cycle without beginning or end.

Since the 1980s, Leiko Ikemura has explored themes of transition, transculturality, and collective consciousness beyond the boundaries of nations and gender. Her practice moves seamlessly between luminous and often monumental paintings, introspective drawings and watercolours, glazed terracotta sculptures, glass, and ceramics.

Ikemura’s figures, which often appear as female spirits, can be read as childlike, defiant, and independent, yet at the same time fragile and ethereal. They seem to possess the power to exist in multiple worlds. Mythical hybrid creatures, somewhere between human and animal, populate her artistic universe. The ubiquitous Usagi motif, for example, combines rabbit ears with a human female body. First created by Ikemura in response to the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, the motif embodies universal suffering, resilience, and renewal.

The East Asian ›Sansuiga‹ tradition of landscape painting, the masters of old Japan, Surrealism, post-war abstraction, and the figurative painting of the 1980s, which she helped shape, all serve as sources of inspiration for the artist and merge as influences within her work.

Leiko Ikemura (イケムラレイコ, 池村玲子) was born in Tsu, Mie Prefecture, Japan, and lives and works in Berlin. She studied at Osaka University of Foreign Studies and the University of Fine Arts in Seville before settling in Europe. From 1991 to 2015, she was Professor of Painting at the Universität der Künste Berlin.

Ikemura’s works are represented in major international museum collections, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris; the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo; the Kunstmuseum Basel; and the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf. Her most recent solo exhibitions include ›Motherscape‹, ALBERTINA, Vienna (2025); ›Das Meer in den Bergen‹, Kunstmuseum Chur (2025); ›Rising Light / Frozen Moment‹, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2024–2025); ›Floating Spheres‹, Kunsthalle Emden (2024); ›When Animals Become Art‹, The Feuerle Collection, Berlin (2023); ›Museo de Arte de Zapopan‹, Guadalajara, Mexico (2023); ›Witty Witches‹, Georg-Kolbe-Museum, Berlin (2023); and ›Towards New Seas‹, Kunstmuseum Basel (2019). In 2025, she was honored by the Japanese government as a “Person of Cultural Merit.”