14. Mishima Kimiyo 三島 喜美代

Born in Osaka in 1932, Kimiyo Mishima initially started her career as a painter. The major art movements of the 1950s-1960s, such as Art Informel, Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, had a great influence on Kiniyo Mishima. She was inspired by these movements but sought her own style within them. She used techniques such as collage and repetitive imagery to create works that were both close to reality and alienated from it, a clear registration but also a critical note. Her search led to a process in which she started making ceramic works from 1971. She developed a method of screen-printing prints of advertisements and articles on clay and folding them into a crumpled newspaper, a discarded coca-cola can and other disposable items. By creating and exhibiting beer cans, cardboard packaging, advertising printing and other by-products of mass consumption as hyper-realistic ceramic sculptures, she gave these disposable objects a permanent form. Her work expressed in both critical and humorous ways her relationship to a society in which mass media, waste and excessive consumption play a leading role. Kimiyo Mishima is now a celebrated ceramic sculptor with numerous major exhibitions around the world. Her works are in the collection of The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, The Art Institute of Chicago, The British Museum in London and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, among others.