Midori Harima

Midori Harima
Sculptor and Printmaker, New York City

Midori Harima was born in Japan and attended the Jyoshibi University of Art, earning a BA in printmaking. She lives in New York City and works out of the upper floor in a building that houses the alternative gallery, The HoneySpace.

“My aim does not lie in changing the object itself by providing it with substantial quality, quantity and meaning (creating depth), my aim lies in finding a new way of relating to the world by continuously reconsidering the self and analyzing the structures of recognition.”

Where did you grow up? Yokohama, Japan

When did you first consider yourself to be an artist? After my first show

How does popular media shape or play a role in your work? What is your process?
The source of my artistic production lies in my own daily visual experiences with media, such as books, magazines, and the internet. I collect ordinary images from these sources and convert them into black and white copies; from these copies I construct hollow, figurative sculptures.The hollow figure, its surface covered with fragments of Xeroxed images, corresponds to how we perceive objects in an information intensive society.

What central theme does your work address? Perception

What are you working on at the moment? photo projects

Who are some of that artists that have inspired you? Beuys, Hokusai, Feliz Gonzalez-Torres

Can you tell us about your goal with this work and what inspires you?
When we acquire something as information we have to kill it in a physical or social sense. I explore a way to perceive the world while maintaining its wholeness and abstraction.The ideas of human perception described in early Buddhist philosophy such as “Madhyamika” and “Yogacara” inspire me a lot.

“I grew up in late 20th-century Japan exposed to superficial information from all over the world that lacked any genuine connection to its original sources or Japanese traditions. My creations also emerge from a reality constructed with information, which has no basis in reality.
Through art, I try to create a place where someone can reconstruct wholeness out of controlled and fragmented information. I am interested in what this wholeness is and how it will be reflected in reality.”