An Evening with the Artist: Yoko Inoue @ SPACES

Yoko Inoue will discuss how she created her project on view while she was the artist-in-residence at SPACES.

Yoko Inoue (Brooklyn, NY) researched the Japanese Art collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, focusing on how Japanese aesthetics and cultural iconography was integrated into the American economy and how former CMA Director Sherman Emory Lee’s role as a World War II “Monuments Man” impacted post-war US occupation and “democratization”.

For her installation at SPACES, Tea Taste Democracy and Upside down Objects, Inoue created works that contextualize the socio-political condition of the time in which Lee conducted his extensive field research. Her installation also introduces her ideas regarding imported kitsch figurines that were stamped "made in occupied Japan" and widely marketed to the middle class in America as home décor objects. She worked with the Cleveland Institute of Art’s Ceramics Department to create a series of work that questions their contemporary relevance and value.