odoriko series drawing

Keito Mitoma has developed her practice through a variety of media, including video, sculptural objects, and performance. The constituent elements of her works are equally diverse, ranging from found products and language to the artist herself. Underlying these varied expressions is a condition in which opposing forces coexist—for example, stillness and movement, or subject and object.
These tense relationships are subtly dislocated through gestures that are at once humorous and light-handed. As a result, surface meanings remain suspended, interrupting the viewer’s attempt at interpretation. When confronted with Mitoma’s works, our unconscious assumptions about what constitutes “art” or the “correct” way to understand it are quietly unsettled.
Through the confusion and sense of estrangement that emerge when meaning is left suspended, Mitoma seeks to reexamine the very nature of art itself with a subtle sense of irony.