Featured Artist 1: Jessica Tanto

Yuzuru graduated from LaSalle College of Arts, Singapore in 2009 for Bachelor of the Arts program in music composition. She has embarked on performing music and improvisation and making video, installation and performance art with Zentai [Zentai Art Project – http://yuzuru.weebly.com/]. She also organizes Zentai exhibition, Zentai walk, Zentai performance with [Zentai Art Festival – http://www.zentaiart.com/]. She also organised Performance art event “Performance Art Resource Orchestrator” in Singapore. Recent performance in Back Art Performance Art Biennale（Bangladesh）、Asian Art Biennale（Bangladesh）、2017 Artregems International Performance Art Festival（Taiwan）、Sound art network（Singapore）

Born in Sapporo (Japan) in 1961. Currently live in Saitama. Graduated from Musashino Art University, Department of Oil Painting, and started performance art around 1991. Her first public performance was in Singapore Festival of Arts, Fringe 1992, titled “Topaz”, where she swam in the river. Since then, she worked often in public spaces in Tokyo, and also participated in performance art festivals in Korea, Poland, Germany, U.K., Israel, Thailand, Indonesia, China, U.S.A., Canada, Brazil, etc., and an exhibition of her drawings was in the museum in Sweden. Her drawings‘s method is similar to that of surrealism based on the extreme private sense of the body. On the other hand, in the case of her performance and video works, she often invites the audience to her performance and works in public spaces. Through the process, she would reveal their (our)unconscious sensations, view of the world, and cultural backgrounds through the relationships with living things, including people, and nature and material made by people.

After having tasted democracy for a short time, the people of Myanmar have once again been forced to live under a brutal military dictatorship. In February 2021 the Military staged a coup, overthrowing the civilian government who had won the previous year’s election.

This artwork portrays how Myanmar people have been living together since the Coup. The light in the middle of the painting represents the short period of democracy before the coup while the darkness from both sides represents the encroaching pressure resulting from the military’s violent hunger for power at all costs.
Already a poor country, the political repression following the Coup has had a disastrous knock-on effect for the economy and the health sector that appears to be getting worse each day. The figures in the middle of the painting, their masks protecting them from both the pandemic and from being identified in the midst of street protests and active resistance, represent the complex role of the Burmese people at this time, as both victims and fighters.

Wherever there is the ugliness of repression, there is also the beauty of resistance. The figures on the sides of painting are depicted in traditional Myanmar dress while also subtly showing the 3 finger salute of revolution that has become common currency among activists globally.

Mariko Ohtsuka was born in Kumamoto, 1983. From 2017 to 2021, dispatched to Yangon as Asia Center program coordinator of the Japan Foundation, Yangon. Currently, as an agricultural freelancer, working on daily farming in Kumamoto and involved in some international exchange projects in Japan.

Mineki Murata (Japan) was born in Gunma in 1979. He graduated from the Sculpture Department at Tama Art University in 2005, and currently lives and works in Gunma, Japan. Murata’s drawing performances involving primitive gestures have gradually evolved into installation and audio-visual pieces. His recent solo exhibitions have included “vision inside”, rin art association, Gunma, Japan, 2018; “Necklive”, Art Center Ongoing, Tokyo, 2014; and “My back talk / Shirts” , GALERIE PARIS, Yokohama, 2011. He also participated in the group shows “VOCA 2015”, The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo, 2015; and “The Flower with the Color of the Wind”, Arts Maebashi, Gunma, 2013.

Yuki Kobayashi (Visual Artist / Performance Artist)
Born in 1990, Tokyo, Japan. He received BA from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, Fine Art in 2014 and MA from Royal College of Art, Performance and Painting in 2016. Since Kobayashi started his career as an artist, he has been exploring the neutrality of gender and questioning racial stereotypes, looking into human relations, the resonance between restriction and fluidity in time and space with using his own body. His action-based performance seek to reveal the authenticity of the human condition, working with the unexpected and the spontaneous to discover the invisible. Questioning both power and restrictive social codes towards a more uncertain world of freedom and equality. Kobayashi has been participating world widely to the festival, exhibition, theatre and also working collaboratively in the photography and film. One of his major projects are 2New Gender Bending Strawberry” (2012 – ) that Kobayashi characterised himself as NGBS to make the performance and multimedia pieces, 2Life of Athletics” (2014 – ) that the concept of sexism and racism of sports society, and “I or Another” (2020-) that is from the approach of social responsibility and the risk of visualising masculinity, violence, and the superiority of the majority, this work attempts gender neutrality by performing Kobayashi’s sperm, which appears alive on the screen, as an extension of the body. In 2019, Kobayashi founded and organises the Performance art platform 2Stilllive”. His major exhibition includes : “Experiment Film and Video Festival in Seoul : EX-Live” (MMCA, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea, 2021), “Yuki Kobayashi Art Works 2012-2021” (TAV GALLERY, Tokyo, 2021), “Where
is a place for us?” (The University Art Museum – Tokyo University of the Arts, Tokyo, 2021), “Tokyo Tokyo FESTIVAL Special 13 | TOKYO REAL UNDERGROUND” (Keisei Hakubutsukan-Dobutsuen Station, 2021), Venice International Performance Art Week (European Cultural Centre/Plazzo Mora & Palazzo Michel, Venice, 2020), “Life of Athletics” (VACANT, “Dance New Air 2018), 18th Asian Art Biennale Bangladesh 2018, (Dhaka, 2018), Re-Performance of Marina Abramović in the exhibition “The Cleaner” (Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, 2018), “Acting Together” Yoko Ono & Rirkrit Tiravanija (ASAKUSA, Tokyo, 2016) “Dada 100th Anniversary Festival” as 2Stillllive with Nigel Rolfe” (Spiral, Tokyo, 2016), “Fluxus Water Pieces – Yoko Ono event scores from the collection 2Grapefruit”, 1964” (White Cube Gallery, London, 2015).

After having tasted democracy for a short time, the people of Myanmar have once again been forced to live under a brutal military dictatorship. In February 2021 the Military staged a coup, overthrowing the civilian government who had won the previous year’s election.

This artwork portrays how Myanmar people have been living together since the Coup. The light in the middle of the painting represents the short period of democracy before the coup while the darkness from both sides represents the encroaching pressure resulting from the military’s violent hunger for power at all costs.
Already a poor country, the political repression following the Coup has had a disastrous knock-on effect for the economy and the health sector that appears to be getting worse each day. The figures in the middle of the painting, their masks protecting them from both the pandemic and from being identified in the midst of street protests and active resistance, represent the complex role of the Burmese people at this time, as both victims and fighters.

Wherever there is the ugliness of repression, there is also the beauty of resistance. The figures on the sides of painting are depicted in traditional Myanmar dress while also subtly showing the 3 finger salute of revolution that has become common currency among activists globally.

After having tasted democracy for a short time, the people of Myanmar have once again been forced to live under a brutal military dictatorship. In February 2021 the Military staged a coup, overthrowing the civilian government who had won the previous year’s election.

This artwork portrays how Myanmar people have been living together since the Coup. The light in the middle of the painting represents the short period of democracy before the coup while the darkness from both sides represents the encroaching pressure resulting from the military’s violent hunger for power at all costs.
Already a poor country, the political repression following the Coup has had a disastrous knock-on effect for the economy and the health sector that appears to be getting worse each day. The figures in the middle of the painting, their masks protecting them from both the pandemic and from being identified in the midst of street protests and active resistance, represent the complex role of the Burmese people at this time, as both victims and fighters.

Wherever there is the ugliness of repression, there is also the beauty of resistance. The figures on the sides of painting are depicted in traditional Myanmar dress while also subtly showing the 3 finger salute of revolution that has become common currency among activists globally.

After having tasted democracy for a short time, the people of Myanmar have once again been forced to live under a brutal military dictatorship. In February 2021 the Military staged a coup, overthrowing the civilian government who had won the previous year’s election.

This artwork portrays how Myanmar people have been living together since the Coup. The light in the middle of the painting represents the short period of democracy before the coup while the darkness from both sides represents the encroaching pressure resulting from the military’s violent hunger for power at all costs.
Already a poor country, the political repression following the Coup has had a disastrous knock-on effect for the economy and the health sector that appears to be getting worse each day. The figures in the middle of the painting, their masks protecting them from both the pandemic and from being identified in the midst of street protests and active resistance, represent the complex role of the Burmese people at this time, as both victims and fighters.

Wherever there is the ugliness of repression, there is also the beauty of resistance. The figures on the sides of painting are depicted in traditional Myanmar dress while also subtly showing the 3 finger salute of revolution that has become common currency among activists globally.