SEIKO KITAYAMA

Seiko planned to be an artist for as long as she can remember, beginning to make work around age 3 or 4. Currently she does live performance, video and drawings. Her work is about resilience in the face of violence and difficulty. An international artist, she makes work in her home-base of Japan and around the world. When it comes to performance, the place, its history and local specificities are vitally important. Some places accept Seiko and her work more than others. Her relationship to the place and the audience witnessing the performance varies to a large degree and always affects the work. “It is interesting to try performance in many places and countries,” explains Seiko. Starting a new work always poses challenges. Harassment, sexual violence and the death of a close friend by fire―and the subsequent depression that followed―almost caused Seiko to take her own life at one point. Eventually, she found performance art as an outlet of expression. “I was healed little by little,” reflects Seiko, who credits performance art for her profound sense of resilience. In an art form transcending words, she found the strength to express the unspeakable. Right now, she is planning for a new, international performance art festival in Fukushima, Japan called Responding: International Performance Art Festival and Meetings. For this new performance in September, Seiko is researching the increasing number of suicides at Fukushima since the nuclear plant accident in 2011; the new work will be about suicide. Although it’s hard work, she is continually striving to build a network and make performance art more acceptable in Japan.