Miki Taira平良美樹
Miki Taira was born in 1984. After majoring in calligraphy at Tokyo Gakugei University, she began making sculptures incorporating calligraphy that are based on old Japanese folktales. Since winning the silver prize at Geisai #10 in 2006, Taira has been exhibiting her works at group shows and art fairs both in Japan and abroad. Taira’s works are inspired by oral traditions and folklore that originate in Japan’s rural countryside. She stitches together sheets of hemp cloth dyed with barley tea to form the characters in these stories, and then transcribes the folktale in question onto the surface of her sculptures in dense Japanese writing. While the textures of the cloth and brushstrokes impart an antique look to her works, there is also something faintly ridiculous about their abstract form that imbues them with a special humor.
