This project was to make and exhibit a new work by Mai Endo. This was an invitation work for the exhibition “When It Waxes and Wanes” sponsored by the Austrian Women Artists Association (VBKÖ), and she also had a lecture performance at the exhibition.
The exhibition re-examined historical “cultural exchange” enabled by imagination between different culture from the end of the 19th century up to present, featuring new expressions emerged from alternative and transcultural encounters. The exhibition consists of contemporary artworks as well as historical research materials, archives, and magazines involved in art and queer feminism movements. Among those cultural exchanges, we focused on the art movements in Europe, such as Vienna Secession, the process of modernization of non-Western culture, postwar Japanese girl’s culture, and the queer culture under these influences.
Mai Endo
Born in 1984, Hyogo. Mai Endo had been studying under Prof. Marina Gržinić in Vienna Art Academy as an exchange student in 2018. She is a doctoral student at Tokyo University of the Arts (Oil Painting). She is the artist and actor whose expression layers the message that bodies now exist and the gap between the form of social norms and arts playfully, crossing the methodology and media such as video, photography and drama. In recent years, she issues “Multiple Spirits”, a bilingual queer art zine from/within Japan with critic/curator Mika Maruyama.
Austrian Association of Women Artists (VBKÖ), Wien, Austria