Bio
Maiko Kikuchi received her B.A in Theater Arts and Fashion Design from Musashino Art University, Japan in 2008, her M.F.A in Sculpture from Pratt Institute, in 2012.
Extensive multi-faceted professional experience in the areas of Illustration, painting, drawing, collages, sculpture, animation and puppetry/performance. She presented her art works in “Crown Heights Film Festival”, group exhibition“In Time/Out of Place” at Parasol Project(NY), “NO PARKING” at Ca’d’ Oro Gallery(NY), “Unwritten stories” at HERE art center(NY), “To See or Not To Be Seen” at Hot Wood Art(NY), Online exhibition” Dear You” at Field Project (NY), “Four and twenty Black Birds” at Jamestown Art center(RI), “By Chamber 02” at CITAN (Tokyo), WWW(Tokyo) etc. She has also committed to musicians and bands for creating their music videos.
As theatre artist, she presented her self direction object theatre pieces at many theaters in NYC such as The Public theatre, LaMaMa, Japan Society, St. Ann’s Warehouse, HERE Arts, Dixon Place, The Wild Project, FiveMyles Gallery. She is currently in artist residency program at HERE collaborating with Spencer Lott and also a curator of puppetry residency program “Object Movement”at Center of West Park.
Statement
Making “Visible Daydream” is the coherent purpose for my creation. What, then, is my daydream? I define it as something that becomes unusual when my ordinary life gets all twisted up somehow.
I wake up in my bed, drink coffee, leave the house and walk along the same street to get to my studio every day. On the way, I start thinking,“When I turn right at the corner three blocks away from here, I will usually get to my studio building. Well, what if there is no studio building today? What if there is a zoo instead? What if I can’t even turn the corner because it has turned into dead end?”
By that time, I arrive at the end of the third block and make a right, then find my studio building is there as usual. I feel relieved yet a little bit disappointed at same time. I extract this mixed feeling of excitement and fright while imagining “what if...?”. Then I put that into a bottle, label it, “Daydream”, and then start thinking of how I can share it with others.
The places where I hold daydreams are my sanctuaries and they are everywhere in ordinary life. Sometimes it’s a rooftop that I can see from a subway platform, or a greenhouse where even in winter I can see many tropical plants...sometimes through stained glass. It could be a piece of someone’s room through their window, or inside of a backyard over the walls. Or, it might be a carved road that leads me somewhere around a corner. When I encounter those places, my imagination grows because I can’t enter. My daydream then starts to form because I can’t see what’s exactly there These become my sanctuaries that I’m unable to enter.
