Born in Japan in 1971, Akashi Murakami arrived in France in 1998, then graduates from the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs de Strasbourg in 2004. She does several internships and exchanges in Limoges, Spain, Switzerland, and participated in the artistic residency of Shigaraki in Japan, her native country.
During her various experiments with ceramics, she acquires a solid experience in the practice of molding. Her main source of inspiration comes from nature and she creates particularly complex and unexpected organic forms that evoke natural and random movements.
Based in the Gard since 2005, she regularly exhibits in France and Europe. Her work has been awarded in several international competitions.
« Natural movements are random. The wind blows hard and suddenly stops, the river's current changes rhythm continuously. All these things are beyond our control, they manifest themselves without us necessarily expecting them, or sometimes remain silent when we want them." So spoke Haruo Saji, a Japanese scientist, about nature. The universal movement he describes creates forms, and they too are unexpected.
When I discover these forms, cliffs carved by the wind and the sea, rocks dug by the current, stones pierced by drops or inhabited roots, they inspire me enormously. They have been worked by random movements, sometimes for centuries, I dive in spite of myself in this experience that I have not witnessed, but which is there, concrete, in front of me. In this way, I realize that I am part of this movement, of this harmony.
I pick up the wood and observe it. My intervention on this material can be perceived as the continuity of its experience. At first, I use molding in order to capture my subject, to make a snapshot in volume in a way. Once the piece is extracted from the mold, it reveals a new face, a new nature on which I can intervene. I cut and add pieces, smooth or scrape the material... Sometimes I reconstitute a shape entirely with elements stamped from the natural trace.
When my work is finished, the wooden model will return to its original environment. Nature will take over and continue to carve it and the small traces I have left behind at its own pace ». Akashi Murakami