Makiko Harris

Makiko Harris is a multi-disciplinary visual artist who explores themes of hybridity, gender, identity and power. Informed by feminist theory and her own experiences as a biracial woman, Harris uses painting, installation, sculpture and sound to create immersive environments that challenge viewers to think critically about their own roles in power dynamics.

Harris’ painting practice explores the body as a site of agency and resistance, offering a critical alternative to a world where women's bodies are often a site of particular scrutiny, objectification and fetishization. Her forthcoming Good Girl series, which will be presented in-person at RCA2023, explores lineage, inheritance and women’s roles in dominant family structures. Using high-res scans of kimonos worn by four generations of women in her family as the base, she reimagines these traditional patterns through abstraction. Her family crest, which was originally embroidered on the nape of the neck of the inherited kimonos and could be construed as a symbol of ownership of the wearer’s body, is enlarged and abstracted using a contemporary spray paint stenciling technique. In the Gem series, the same nine ‘gem’ shapes used throughout Harris’ practice are turned into custom-shaped paintings. While the shapes themselves signify a fragmentation or reconfiguration of identity, the use of color is informed by her research into the concept of the ‘monstrous-feminine’: vermillion red in Japan is the color of sacred temples and lipstick worn by geisha. In the west, the same color was originally created with toxic mercury.

In her sculpture and installation work, Harris further explores identity, inheritance and power dynamics. Her series of acrylic and chain tapestries examines the duality of identity as both protection and constriction. Transparent acrylic fragments create an atmosphere of freedom and restriction, delicacy and power. Shattered, they form a fragile, transparent armor. In her series of sculptures featuring marbled jesmonite hands and oversized metal needles, Harris probes the complex and often performative aspects of femininity. The work is both a critique of patriarchy and a provocation, imagining a world where traditionally feminine modes of expression, such as handicrafts, become not just powerful but capable of violence.

Sonically, Harris explores the idea of remixing identity. She combines classical violin and samples of field recordings from encounters of daily life with her family in Japan, including a visit to a geisha cafe and the chants of a monk in her family home during her grandfather’s memorial service. With these as a conceptual base, she mixes in contemporary synths to create a result that sounds less like an art-school experimental soundscape and more like a pop song, reimagining what the future may hold.