“You cunt, I’m not a queer!”: Does MITOBE Nanae postulate a Japanese New Wave Feminism (JNWF) ? 水戸部 七絵、日本のニューウェーブ・フェミニズムを「公準」しているのか？

It can’t be true. Yesterday I had been hooked up by MITOBE Nanae 水戸部 七絵.
2 months ago, she graduated from the “Oil-Painting Department of Tokyo University of the Arts” 東京藝術大学大学院美術研究料油画第一研究室, last month she showed up with a huge new work, being flanked by famous collector TAKAHASHI Ryutaro 高橋龍太郎 @ gallery21yo-j, and 9 days ago she made a big splash with a talk-of-the-town opening party @ posh DIESEL ART GALLERY “People Have The Power” in Shibuya, near the “ultra-cool-bad” Meiji Dori Miyashita Park, for spoiled Japanese kids and foreign tourists. Not for the homeless anymore. DIESEL calls itself: “DIESEL For Successful Living”. The best fucked-up, cunt-slogan in our precarious war-times.

“You cunt, I’m not a queer!” from 2021 opens the door for some Japanese Enlightenment.
It can’t be true, as we mark the 300th anniversary of the birth of German philosopher Immanuel Kant.

Since she has passed the baptism of fire, aka Tokyo’s art code of eroticism, and Mike Kelley’s “Art doesn’t have anything about power relationship. It’s simply but fucking things up with the pure pleasure of fucking them up. The only social function of art is to fuck things up. It has no other social function. Purposely purposeless.”, the evolutionary process of her artistic practice can’t be regarded as pure coincidence.
MITOBE Nanae’s subtle, sensitive works embody a notion of particular qualities as a painter and sculptor. Her emotional gestures with colour through finger-painting, experimental sculptural patterns reflect specific ontological ideas. The compositions stimulate our perception with Kant’s epistemology in mind. “You cunt, I’m not a queer!” suggest not only the sid vicious’s but Kant’s philosophical approach. This kind of personification through Mitobe’s painting-sculptures exemplify a typical cognitive process, in which sublime forms of allegory and metaphysics appear.
Mitobe paints riotous, elemental, often colossal canvases in a deeply physical exercise, accruing layers and layers of paint, of time, which she marks with compulsive, spontaneous articulations and reflective sort of teasing out various associations. Eventually, the older layers start to act as a relief and become this interwoven experience of surprising landscapes or dreamscapes, later put on with her chosen facial motifs. This kind of Art Brut method ignores any academic restraints (especially in regard of her lost time at the “Oil-Painting Department of Tokyo University of the Arts” 東京藝術大学大学院美術研究料油画第一研究室), thus Mitobe’s destructive radicalism let’s her anima flow into liberation in a society which is extremely conservative per se.
Said that, I am certainly aware to re-contextualise her sculptural works via a new “ism”, Japanese artistic movement. Through my academic analysis and research, I can filter out new developments, which might fit in future Japanese art history writing.
I don’t hesitate to call this new movement “Japanese New Wave Feminism” (JNWF) 日本のニューウェーブ・フェミニズム. Because of Japan’s conservative society, I might focus on easy-to-understand terms like Feminism, and not the inexistent “Intersectionality and Gender in Japan”. At this moment I would create the following line up of artists, who “fit in this tentative box”:

Bubu de la Madelaine ブブ・ド・ラ・マドレーヌ
Sputniko! スプツニ子！
NAGASHIMA Yurie 長島 有里枝
KIMURA Ryoko 木村了子
KAZAMA Sachiko 風間サチコ
NOMURA Sakiko 野村佐紀子
MATSUSHITA Mariko 松下まり子
TOMOZAWA Kotao 友沢こたお
MAKIDA Emi 牧田恵実
YOKOYAMA Nami 横山奈美
SUGIYAMA Hinako 杉山日向子
TEZUKA Aiko 手塚愛子
OKADA Hiroko 岡田裕子
MOHRI Yuko 毛利悠子
KATAYAMA Mari 片山真理
ROKKAKU Ayako ロッカク・アヤコ
MAKITA Ai 牧田愛
MITOBE Nanae 水戸部 七絵

Artist colleague KOBAYASHI Masato 小林正人 obviously opened up Mitobe the necessary mental space for creativity. Similarities in radicalism and ego-centrism suggest obvious qualities for the appropriate attitude in artistic practicality.
See also:
KOBAYASHI Masato 小林正人『この星の絵の具［中］ダーフハース通り52』＋『この星の絵の具［上］一橋大学の木の下で』
https://art-culture.world/articles/art-diver-アートダイバー-アート専門出版社/

It will be exciting and revealing to see how Mitobe, who is born in 1988, cultivates her narrative in order to stay in tune with the Zeitgeist.
26th of May 2024
亜 真里男 Mario A

MITOBE Nanae 水戸部 七絵
https://nanaemitobe.com
https://www.instagram.com/nanaemitobe/
https://twitter.com/Nanaejp
https://www.sbiartauction.co.jp/en/auction/detail/123/239

水戸部 七絵 Nanae Mitobe “People Have The Power”
May 18 (Sat) 2024-Jul 3 (Wed) 2024
Open every day, 11:30-20:00
B1F cocoti, 1-23-16 Shibuya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0002
https://www.diesel.co.jp/ja/art-gallery/nanae_mitobe/

up-date 5th of June 2024:

「戦う人」を描く理由。水戸部七絵インタビュー（文・写真：中島良平）
ロックスターやポップアイコンをモチーフに描く、アーティストの水戸部七絵による人気シリーズの第5弾が渋谷のDIESEL ART GALLERYに登場。7月3日まで開催中の個展「People have the power」にて、作家にインタビュー
https://www.tokyoartbeat.com/articles/-/nanae-mitobe-diesel-art-gallery-interview-202406

2nd up-date:

Nanae Mitobe + Kazuhito Kawai “Love Dream”
Gallery Ken Nakahashi
Jun 14 2024 – Jul 13 2024
https://kennakahashi.net/en/exhibitions/love-dream

(end of up-dates)

Pic taken from:
A New Art Star is Born: TOMOZAWA Kotao. Spiritual Transfiguration Oil Paintings @ Seibu Department Store, Shibuya
新日本現代アート・スター 油絵画家 友沢こたお
https://art-culture.world/articles/tomozawa-kotao-友沢-こたお/

See also “水戸部 七絵 Nanae Mitobe ‘People Have The Power'” @ 2:09 〜 4:15

About the DIESEL ART GALLERY, you may check the following link, too:
Joseph Lee “Pleasure in the Pathless Woods” @ DIESEL ART GALLERY
Meiji Dori Miyashita Park 明治通り宮下パーク
https://art-culture.world/articles/miyashita-park-diesel-art-gallery-joseph-lee/

ここに載せた写真、スクリーンショットやテクストは、すべて「好意によりクリエーティブ・コモン・センス」の文脈で、日本美術史の記録の為に発表致します。
Creative Commons Attribution　Noncommercial-NoDerivative Works
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