Misaki Kawai

Artist Statement

I currently strive to make work which keeps the innocent, honest integrity of adolescent playfulness, but on a more grand and sophisticated level. In Air Show I created airborne doll houses in the form of various aircrafts constructed from materials such as cardboard, fabric, pieces of my own clothing, and other materials—including cheaply manufactured objects found or bought in thrift stores, 99 cent stores, or shops in Chinatown. The dolls that ride in, or pilot these planes are clothed in miniature versions of the types of clothing that interest me. Their faces are from photographs that have been transferred on, and usually derive from Western Pop Culture, and often are members of ’60s bands or actors favored by me. In my work, you are likely to see post Beatles Ringo Starr piloting a small aircraft co-piloted by R2D2 and C3PO, or an entire commercial airliner piloted and staffed by several versions of myself.

• issue #22: "Vitamin Island"

Curator Statement

Untitled (Large Plane)

Born in Tokyo, Misaki Kawai has a collector’s mentality that manifests itself in the miniature. This combination informs her work. Her pieces begin with rummaging, collecting, picking, finding, sourcing, and this penchant is the driving force that rivals that of Fred Sanford, in both its prolific nature and period aesthetics (period being the ’70s).The uniquely interesting materials that she obfuscates from the junkyard are transformed into Robinson Crusoe miniature worlds of tree-houses, airplanes “in the friendly skies,” Carnival Cruises, and Club Med waves. And these dioramas are peopled by R2D2, Kawai herself in portraiture, as well as the local pilots, surfers, stewardesses, passengers in their typical pedestrian roles on, or in, any of the planes, boats, houses, all in miniature. And this realization is complete with miniature airsickness bags and other pocket airline goodies visible in the Untitled (Large Plane). This Romper-Room-in-pastiche cultural obsession certainly has its roots in the love of the miniature, and can’t help but recall the miniatures at Chicago Art Institute, stored benevolently by Mrs James Ward Thorne in the basement, which realistically chronicle French, English, and American furniture and living styles from the 18th-20th centuries. Kawai took the cue and records the twenty-first century in her own inimitable way.

Mars Investigation Laboratory

In Mars Investigation Laboratory Misaki Kawai takes the idea of the diorama to the extreme and fuses it with an elementary school kid’s penchant for creating a Troll house, albeit a gigantic Troll house. The “laboratory” consists of a section of the famous “Red Planet” with two astronauts exploring the surface, and several working in a confined lab atmosphere underground conducting experiments and reproducing baby yellow “Furbys” among other things. Outside the space explorers’ confined environment, several other planets and stars give the feeling of the rest of the universe, and even suggest Earth. Not meant as a direct citation in the traditional sense of the historic diorama, Mars Investigation Laboratory works in just the opposite fashion. It lets us imagine, and even in a weird way, reminisce about, what the world out there is or could be, our relation to it, and allows our goofy cultural realities to seep into the “what ifs” of the future.