Takami Miyaoka

Miyaoka Takami is a contemporary Japanese ceramic artist born in 1980 in Saitama Prefecture. From a family of potters, he initially studied economics at the University of Tokyo (2004) before returning to his passion and training in ceramics at the Kyoto Prefectural Pottery Technical University (2008). Miyaoka's idol series unfolds a singular, hybrid, and profoundly magnetic universe. His work is distinguished by a concept of dichotomy: the ancient and the modern, East and West, the real and the imaginary. Some of his works are not meant to be viewed from a distance. They are discovered up close, in silence, almost like a secret. Each piece seems to emerge from an intermediate world, simultaneously echoing the past and embodying resolutely contemporary figures. Through his series of idols that fuse traditional pottery and contemporary pop culture, Miyaoka imprints the ever-changing images of our time, particularly those drawn from manga and anime characters, into the eternity of clay. He revisits the notion of the figurative icon (gūzō / 偶像 in Japanese). For him, clay is a vehicle for memory. Here, the glaze becomes skin, the sculpture becomes memory, and the viewer is free to project their own recollections onto it. He has exhibited in Japan and internationally, participating in biennials and art fairs in Europe, Asia, and the United States.