MAHO KUBOTA GALLERY is pleased to announce its opening in March 2016.

Situated in the heart of the Aoyama and Harajuku area in between upscale Gaien-nishi Dori street and the quiet historical street of Seizoroi Zaka, the gallery opens with a solo show of Japanese artist Yurie Nagashima. Viewed as the pioneer of the Girly Photo movement, which took off in the latter half of the 1990s, Nagashima has grappled with the question of her identity, both within the social group, and particularly as a woman, since her debut in 1993, creating works relating to her relationships with others by directing her camera at herself and those close to her.

Nagashima’s latest show, entitled “about home” takes the form of an installation made up of a tent, which the artist created in collaboration with her mother, and groups of photographs of varying sizes. The tent is made of an assortment of different materials taken

from Nagashima’s house, such as clothes and housekeeping fabrics, while the photographs are a mixture of new photographs taken by the artist during the making of the tent, and others from before that time, taken in Japan and the U.S. There are no fixed boundary lines that can be drawn between the photographs and the tent, and they come together as one within the exhibition space.

One of the factors lying behind the conception process for this installation is the legacy of a box of flower photographs taken by the artist’s grandmother, which was also a great inspiration when the artist compiled her 2010 collection, Swiss (AKAAKA Art Publishing). Although her grandmother had no obvious intention to publish her photographs, in them Nagashima saw the crystallization of key themes such as the passion of the unrecognized creator toward creation, and the difficulties that women faced in pursuing a creative career in past society.