About

In my work, I evoke the varied emotions and weaknesses inhabiting the human heart by presenting them in the form of insects.
Human emotions and weaknesses are like insects. Jealousy and loneliness always come along, seemingly out of nowhere, and take abode in the heart like a parasite. Before one realizes it, the jealousy or loneliness has multiplied and commenced eating and manipulating one’s heart from the inside out. Even an emotion normally staying deep in the heart will, at some moment, appear on the surface-as if emerging from a pupa-and spread its wings.
On the other hand, when we observe particular emotions and weaknesses from different angles and try touching them, we start to notice how interesting and attractive each one is. Even varieties of emotion that people see as negative or unhealthy reveal aspects of charm on closer observation. I find them adorable, these emotions and weaknesses that sometimes peep out and show their faces.
Kawagoe Yurie
(Translated from Japanese to English : Brian Amstutz)

No human being is perfect. Is it not impossible for a person to live from birth to death without ever making a mistake and remaining “clear,” “bright,” and “untainted” until the very end?I Furthermore, making that the top priority in life would likely be too exhausting and painful. It would be akin to living every day in constant fear.think everyone has various negative aspects such as shortcomings somewhere, and also has embarrassing memories of past and failures that cannot be told to others. In this day and age, I am very afraid that as soon as we find even the slightest negativity in another person, we will immediately dislike or reject that person, or demand too much from others to be perfect and human without flaws. I believe that "living" is to look forward hard while having various negative parts in the mind and memories.

I myself am by no means a "good person." I've always had a complex about that. When I learned about someone's good deeds or how good their personality was, I often blamed myself and compared them with others, saying, "I can't be like that," or "I wouldn't be able to say or do something like that."

With this in mind, I create my works with a wish to gradually accept the weak and dark parts within myself and others, while also encouraging myself and hoping to find strength in moving forward and embracing the future as I grow older.
For this reason, I try to express all the "insects" that express human emotions and weaknesses in my works in beautiful and adorable ways.

Kawagoe Yurie approaches production by first imagining “a human emotion taking form as an insect.” Her concept, in this sense, is opposite to “personifying” non-human things by giving them human characteristics; in her case, she has established a style of giving strikingly apt insect forms to human sensibilities. Then, in specimen of cowards (2013), after embodying normally hard-to-distinguish emotions in richly illusionistic insect forms, she categorizes and arrays them for display in a specimen box, thereby taking her art into a beautiful new realm. An artwork composed of three foldable panels, it also resembles a triptych altarpiece. The human themes, seemingly placed in an altarpiece for conducting religious rites, evoke humanity’s original sin and its consequences: suffering, the deceits of the passions, absurd death, and the vanity of life. In the insects of Yowamushi Specimens, we sense truth-the ability to poke fun at our pessimistic views of the world.
In dying of coward (2015) an insect’s process of sublimation is depicted serially as in a scroll painting. One is brought to mind of a kusozu painting of the body’s decay in nine stages. Here, however, an insect of emotion fades and transforms, strikingly, into a blooming flower in what might be called a triptych.
In her new work, cowards that have a clown (2017), Kawagoe arrays specimens of comical emotions of flattery. The larvae, moreover, grow large without maturing and forming pupae. The Japanese community, which takes form even when mature adults are not present, is peculiar. In a certain sense, it can also be considered a high-level matured society. If things continue this way, the Japanese will not only mature but also degenerate and deteriorate. As people grow, they foster insects in their injured, worried, and suffering hearts. The insects hide their weakness behind comical masks and move through our world without ever spreading their wings.

Tatematsu Yumiko

(Translated from Japanese to English : Brian Amstutz)
(Leaflet: “Aperto 07 KAWAGOE Yurie” Translated from Japanese to English : Brian Amstutz　The curator of the exhibition is Yumiko Tatematsu.)