Shimizu Chiaki

• EXHIBITION

Born in Shiga Prefecture in 1967, Shimizu joined Atelier Yamanami in 1987. During her nearly 30-year career as an embroidery artist, she created works using a wide variety of motifs. These included TV personalities, people in magazines, movie characters, and people depicted in famous paintings, as well as people close to her, such as the atelier’s director and her mother. Whether on screen or right in front of her, people are equally subjects of love and embroidery for Shimizu. Her embroidery process involves making a rough drawing on the fabric, outlining it with chain stitching, and adding colors in a manner reminiscent of painting. The vibrant and bold color scheme evokes Fauvism. Through her unique lens, the model figures she depicts are often distorted, resulting in a metamorphosis that shakes our perception.
Around 2020, she began working on brush drawings due to difficulty continuing with embroidery. Because of her progressing dementia, quite a few of her drawings are difficult for others to interpret, yet her brushwork is bold and unconstrained, full of inspiration. Her style is reminiscent of Georg Baselitz, who pursued a pictorial expression that rejected conventional representation and interpretation. Her major exhibitions include Painting with Thread. Painting on Cloth. (MOB Museum of Alternative-Art, Tochigi Prefecture, 2025) and Museum of Together (Spiral, Tokyo, 2017).

EXHIBITION

IWASE AREA