Yuko Asai, Japan – still image from “Make up”, 2011

It’s LIQUID International Contest – First Edition 2012: Yuko Asai

Yuko Asai is the video art winner of Its LIQUID international contest – First Edition 2012 with her video Make-up, up against 42 other artists.

Born in 1985 in Aichi (Japan) Yuko Asai is a young and promising video artist. She completed last year her Master in Fine Arts at Tsukuba University of Art & Design and passed her Master’s thesis on the potential of make-up as an expressive medium focusing of Cindy Sherman and similar artists.

Yuko Asai, Japan – still image from “Make up”, 2011

Her first artwork, Make-up (2011), focuses on this fascination about cosmetics. They have indeed long played an important part in non-verbal communication, religious ceremonies and so on. For Yuko Asai, they are not simple adornments aiming at making one’s appearance more attractive. She sees them as tangible signs of power, ideas, emotions, attitudes and hopes of people that they create on the surface of their bodies. The artists believes cosmetics are also used to express thoughts of “I always want to be like I am now (a young woman), fears about becoming “old”, as well as rebellion against “the ideal image of womanhood demanded by society”.

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Yuko Asai
Japanese Video Artist
yllodyu256@honey.ocn.ne.jp
www.yukoasai.com