Bio

Kae Sasaki (she/her) is a visual artist and Japanese-born settler living and working on Treaty One Territory, colonially known as Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

Kae grew up in Fukui, an hour away from Kyoto, with a slight detour in El Paso, Texas in her formative years. She graduated from Rikkyo University in Tokyo where she studied German literature as well as education and library science. After moving to Winnipeg she worked full-time in accounting and half-time grading exams and essays on campus while putting herself through School of Art at University of Manitoba, graduating with first class honours in 2012. Kae has taught drawing as a sessional instructor at University of Manitoba faculty of architecture while establishing a full-time studio practice.
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Kae is a recipient of Alice Hamilton Painting Prize, Cecil C. Richards Memorial Award for achievement in figurative sculpture, Lynn Sissons Memorial Scholarship, and a public art commission award from University of Manitoba Sculptural Experience competition. Her art practice has been generously supported by grants from Winnipeg Arts Council, Manitoba Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts, and her work can be found in private, public, and corporate collections in Canada and U.S.A. She has been shortlisted for the Kingston Prize (2015/2017/2019), the Salt Spring National Art Prize
(2017) and Jackson's Open Painting Prize (2018/2019) for her paintings.

Statement

In my work I seek an imaginative revitalisation of the narrative and atmospheric potential of painting. I negotiate the ability of painting to create visual worlds that are both familiar and extraordinary, rooted in everyday corporeal and spatial experiences, yet taking off into the synthetic domain of image-signs. I begin by considering the composition and approach to colour, and I rework the paintings until they reveal unforeseen meanings that exist beyond any preconceived model. As the psychological component takes over, symbols and other elements are added to bring them forward so that the paintings would further open up in a multi-vocal way. The resulting conceptual conflict is perhaps what brings my work into focus, as the paintings become mysterious in a way that attenuates engagement. The layered meanings in my paintings emanate from a profound emotional connection to life experience that allows me to engage my interest in perception, memory and narrative with the ever-evolving, often conflicting nature of contemporary Canadian painting.
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​I have lived much of my adult life transitioning from a young Japanese woman to a Canadian artist with children. Assigned roles, cultural expectations and determinants for women are vastly different in each country but the awakening of self-awareness is common to both. When it happens and how it first manifests in a child is the subject of these paintings. Are cultural memory and context mere backdrops against which we play out our lives or do they determine who we become? These portraits hint perhaps at a first flowering of self as a consequence of choice.

www.kaesasaki.com

@kaesasakiart