Hanako Murakami

Hanako Murakami’s (Japan) works are based on her in-depth research of historical media, such as alternative photographic techniques and letterpress printing. By creating speculative experiments with these media, she produces situations in which truth and fiction are intertwined. ‘Exposure’ was made using a powerful electron microscope in a laboratory for artistic conservation research. It shows the reaction of the photosensitive material used in daguerreotypes when it contacts light. The mechanical gaze burns the object, while it resembles a moving organism under the microscope.

Hanako Murakami, ‘Exposure’ (still), 2019. Video, 3.16 min.

Murakami received her Bachelor of Literature from the University of Tokyo in 2007 and her MA from the Tokyo University of the Arts, Department of New Media in 2009. With a grant from the Pola Art Foundation, she moved to France, where she joined Le Fresnoy National Studio of Contemporary Art. Her major exhibitions include ‘From Here to There’, Japan Society, New York (2020); ‘La photographie à l’épreuve de l’abstraction’, FRAC Normandie, Rouen (2020); “Arles 2019: New Discovery Award”, Ground Control Arles, Arles (2019); ‘CRITERIUM 96: Hanako Murakami’, Art Tower Mito, Ibaraki (2019); ‘La Parfaite’, Maison de la Culture de Japon à Paris, Paris (2016); ‘The Capital Room: Beyond Three Dimensional Logical Pictures: Hanako Murakami’, Gallery αM, Tokyo (2015); ‘Panorama 17’, Le Fresnoy, Studio National d’Art Contemporain (2015); ‘Practice of Everyday Life’, Aomori Contemporary Art Centre (2011); ‘Tokyo Story’, Tokyo Wonder Site (2010).