Akiko Ichikawa

Akiko Ichikawa (アキーコー・イチカワ also 市川 明子 Ichikawa Akiko) is a New York City-based interdisciplinary visual artist, writer, and editor.^[1][2] She has exhibited her work in The Hague, Berlin, Washington D.C., Newark, St. Paul, Minnesota, and Incheon, South Korea, as well as in New York City's Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx.^[3][4] She has also written on contemporary and 20th century art and culture for Flash Art, Hyperallergic, and zingmagazine.

Early life and education

Her family moved to the US, San Francisco, when she was three. She grew up in the suburbs of Boston and Nashville, and attended Brown University and Hunter College's MFA program, graduating from the former with honors. She currently lives and works in New York City.^[5][6]

Work

Her concept-based work exists in the forms of performance art, installation art^[7] and net.art. Her performance work^[5][8] include a series of site-specific gifting performances called Limited, Limited Edition she has presented at Socrates Sculpture Park, in Long Island City, Queens;^[9] in Jamaica, Queens; at the Incheon Women Artists' Biennale in Incheon, South Korea;^[10] at On Stellar Rays gallery in the Lower East Side; in three locations in Newark, New Jersey for Aljira Center for Contemporary Art,^[11] in a school yard in East Harlem; and on H Street NE in Washington D.C.^[12] For Bad Kanji, a 2015 piece, she painted temporary kanji tattoos at the Spring/Break Art Show, held in the historic office spaces above the James A. Farley Post Office in New York City.^[13]

She also works as a historian and has performed two of Fluxus-member Alison Knowles's event scores, namely #5 Wounded Furniture and #3 Nivea Cream Piece.^[12][14] The latter was live-blogged on Hyperallergic^[15] and well-received, with Kyle Chayka writing that it was "definitely among [his] favorites."^[16] In 2015, she wrote about the Japanese American incarceration through the photography of Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, and Toyo Miyatake for Hyperallergic which has been shared over 8,000 times on Facebook.^[17][18]

In addition to Internet art in the Aughts that simulates a series of imagined but impractical art installations, Ichikawa has created has a series of blogs on Facebook around food organized by color, touching upon issues of cultural identity, food sourcing, gentrification patterns, environmental concerns, and greenwashing while sharing nutrition and cost-cutting tips: I ♥ Yellow Food, I ♥ Orange Food, I ♥ Red Food, I ♥ Green Food, and I ♥ Blue Food.^{[19][20][21][22]} While not supportive of Facebook's history of massive online-privacy violations, its agreement to carry the 2016 Republican National Convention, and its continuing lack of transparency,^[23] the artist nevertheless views the social media site as the most effective, user-friendly way to include as many participants as possible.

Ichikawa's art before 2005 was primarily built around the placement and assembly of basic construction materials in open spaces. She presented one such installation for her solo exhibition at Momenta Art^[24] and another at Andrew Kreps gallery in a group exhibition curated by Dean Daderko,^[25][26] now a curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.^[27] This work evolved into a Net.art piece, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? that is permanently stored on Rhizome.org.^[22]

Art writing

She has written on contemporary art for Flash Art on the work of Ken Lum, Laurel Nakadate, Dan Peterson and, for NY Arts magazine, the work of Jane and Louise Wilson^[28] and for Zing Magazine, the work of Siah Armajani.^[29][30]

In 2015, she wrote about the photography of Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, and Toyo Miyatake and the Japanese American incarceration for Hyperallergic.^[17][18] The article received a second spike in interest (about 5,000 more Facebook shares, totaling 8,000 shares) after the spokesman of a Trump-supporting PAC cited the Japanese American incarceration as precedent for the Muslim registry on Fox News in early November 2016.^[31]

Awards

• 2013 Cuts and Burns Residency, Outpost Artists Resources
• 2003 Longwood Arts Project and Residency, the Bronx
• 2002 Middlebrook-Sugano Fellowship, Djerassi Artists Residency
• 2000 Independent Project Grant, Artists Space

Family

Her younger sister, Yoko Ichikawa, is an Oakland, California-based ESL teacher and graphic designer^[32] and her younger brother, Kenshin Ichikawa,^[33][34] founded and designed Rocksmith streetwear, which has done a collaborative line with the Wu Tang Clan and a music video with Future, among other things, and has been worn by all of the major American hip-hop stars.^[35][36] Yoko is a graduate of Wesleyan University, Kenshin a graduate of Columbia University, and married to food writer Nina Fallenbaum.^[37]

Notes

See also

• Limited, Limited Edition (Incheon) on Vimeo
• Sharing Kanji on Vimeo
• Audience reaction to a 2011 performance of Alison Knowles's #3 Nivea Cream Piece on YouTube