Artist Interview: Ibuki Kuramochi

Ibuki Kuramochi is a Japanese-born interdisciplinary artist who is currently based in Los Angeles. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums in New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Paris, Sydney, Taipei, and Rome.

She incorporates the Japanese modern/contemporary dance Butoh, performance, video, installation, and painting in her art and explores concepts around the body, the resonance of thought and body, metamorphosis, cyborg feminism, and post-human feminism.

We asked Ibuki about her art, creative process, and inspirations.

Can you tell us about your background as a digital artist? How did you get started in this field?

Before I started digital art, I worked primarily in physical performance art and physical painting. When the 2020 pandemic turned all consciousness online, I felt that my physicality had been lost, and at the same time I saw the wonderful potential for physicality to exist online. I began to create digital works related to the body with the intention of transplanting and implanting the physical body into the digital world. I mainly documented my own performance art, and recorded and created video art as a kind of daily body diary.

I also documented my own physical performances and documentation of the body, re-deconstructed them, and created new creature-like forms using Photoshop.

The basis of my work is rooted in the female physicality, and I work with the theme of the uterus, cyborg, post-human, and alien inspirations. I also love to explore my own sensuality and fetishism in my video art. These inspirations are connected to Freud's ID. (ID is one of the terms used to describe human mental functions and refers to instinctual desires and physiological urges.)

“Butoh, known as the “Dance of Darkness,” was founded by Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno after World War II as a means of re-establishing Japanese cultural identity. Butoh dance turned away from modernization and Western dance styles, and founded Butoh on unknown principles such as philosophy, the subconscious, primitive instincts, and ancient, incomprehensible myths. Also, in the world of Butoh, even today, the ideal of perfection of the male body is rooted in the patriarchal culture of Japan (as the second sex).
I critique these patriarchal physicalities with an exploration of the phenomenal body, the womb, and the female body, which emerge anew in conjunction with the concept of cyborg-feminism and technology.”

— Ibuki Kuramochi

What inspires your art? Are there any particular themes or subjects that you enjoy exploring through your artwork?

When I create a digital painting, I start by deconstructing my physical image in Photoshop.

From there, I construct a new shape, adjust the colors and composition through various layers. It is a very organic process. Japanese Butoh dance, which is the root of my performance art, is a very poetic and abstract form of dance expression that has no set choreography and emphasizes inner rather than outer movement. I believe that the concept of Butoh dance's physicality is at the core of my digital paintings in particular.

As for my video art, I have a completely opposite method of production, carefully composing and storyboarding before shooting. In the process of production, I sometimes experiment and mix compositions and effects, but for the most part, the production process proceeds according to a well-defined image in my head. Ideas and conceptions are basically based on the words of books on philosophy, which are very important to me. In particular, Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto and Rosi Braidotti's Post-human Feminism are fundamental to my art.

滲 SHIN, 2020 by Ibuki Kuramochi — 滲 *SHIN, 2020 by Ibuki Kuramochi*

Can you share an example of a challenging project you've worked on recently? What were the obstacles you encountered, and how did you overcome them?

I am currently participating in a metaverse residency with a critique group called LOOP ART CRITIQUE. It is a wonderful program in which participating artists attend three critique sessions during the week to inspire and critique each other, and through the two-month program, they construct their works and spaces on the metaverse for the final form of the exhibition. I have created many digital works such as video art and digital paintings, but the way to show them in the metaverse and the use of space was new territory for me. When I put video art into gifs, they showed a wonderful presence and function in the metaverse. It was very exciting to see digital materials that were created with a two-dimensional concept take on a 3D form through the space of the metaverse.

In the group show “No Beginning No End,” which opens on July 1, an installation of my extended physicality will be on display. My physicality reproduces, expands, liquefies, and lives in a metaverse garden like an alien. If possible, use a VR headset and come visit.

How do you stay inspired and motivated as a digital artist? Are there any specific techniques or practices you use to overcome creative blocks?

Inspiration works with my physicality on a daily basis and my sexuality, which includes fetishes. Regardless of my will, my female body and spirit, given the ability to conceive children, are subject to various hormonal riots on a daily basis. These riots are painful and ask me to consider my limitations. Putting my corporeality down on the digital encourages a release from the physical female body, which is so dominant and powerful that it embraces the identity of an overwhelming other, like a cyborg or an alien. Working with my body, my work always lives with my body.

“My work evokes a break from the oblivion of the body in today’s virtual world, and an awakening to a new physicality extracted from the media.”

— Ibuki Kuramochi

Endocrine, 2021 by Ibuki Kuramochi

What advice would you give to aspiring digital artists who are just starting out? Are there any resources or learning materials you would recommend to help them improve their skills?

With smartphones and AI tools now in use by people of all ages around the world, technology is more accessible and indispensable than ever before. It is so commonplace for artists to use digital tools to create their work that there is little reason to obsess over physical materials or old media anymore. It is important to find the programs, materials, and themes that work best for you as well. I think this is true for art in all media.