December 12, 2013

Ohio Artist Migiwa Orimo explores notions of Refuge, nest, habitat and memories of lived spaces.

In Residence: December 8 2013 ? February 8, 2014
Exhibition: January 31, 2014 ? March 28, 2014
Opening Reception: Friday, January 31, 6:00 ? 9:00 PM

Cleveland, OH, December 1, 2013- Building upon her past public art project (that collected citizens' private memories imbedded in public spaces), Orimo will, during her residency at SPACES, turn the focus around and visit private homes of Cleveland families and collaborate with them in exploring notions of refuge, nest, habitat, and memories of lived spaces. Orimo will then create a new installation in the gallery that collapses the boundaries between open and hidden spaces that we live in and pass through daily.

Orimo comes to the SWAP program fresh from a project that looks at the "act of remembering", and the difference between public and private memories. Asking specific questions about personal and collective remembering, and how this memory becomes history. Orimo pulls images and material from public receptacles where we "outsource memories", where memories are abandoned in plain view to be forgotten, or re-imagined, re-presented, re-collected, "where memories meander away from the precise."

In Cleveland, during her residency, Orimo will turn her attention toward the Private, and enter homes of Cleveland Families. By imbedding herself for a period of time in the dwelling, and working with the hosts, the artist will be in a unique position to reveal aspects of how lives are expressed by home, and the intersection of memory and place.

In collaboration with the families, Orimo will create an installation for SPACES that collapses the boundaries between open and hidden spaces that we live in and pass through daily.

ARTIST BIO
Migiwa Orimo (Born Japan, resides in Yellow Springs OH.) is an artist whose primary work takes the form of installation. Orimo was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. After receiving her degree in literature and studying graphic design, she immigrated to the US in the early eighties.

In her process of creating installations, she begins by entering a space of language. Often her installations consist of disparate elements--painting, drawing, sculpture, video and sound. In attempting to establish relationships and tension between those elements, similar to constructing sentences, she explores the notions of gap, slippage, and "a realm of disjunction."

She exhibits her work nationally; her work has been shown extensively in Ohio and around the USA -- the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC, the San Bernadino Museum, CA, the Richman Gallery, Baltimore, MD, and in Ohio, the Springfield Art Museum, Dayton Art Institute, OSU's Urban Arts Space, Oberlin College's Baron Gallery, and Spaces, Cleveland.

A two-time recipient of the Individual Artists Fellowship, in 2008 and 2013 the Ohio Arts Council awarded Orimo an Individual Creativity Excellence Award for her interdisciplinary art projects. She has received the Headland Center for the Arts Residency in 2012. Orimo lives and works in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

SWAP
Since 2002, the SPACES World Artist Program (SWAP) has hosted residencies in Cleveland for international, national and local artists that support the creation, presentation and discussion of new artwork, while facilitating new connections between Cleveland communities and artists from around the world. Migiwa Orimo is SWAP's 46th artists-in-residence.