Dates｜ January 7 – 30, 2022
Venue｜MEM  map
Open Hours｜13:00 – 19:00
The gallery is closed on Mondays that are not national holidays. (Except when Monday falls on a holiday, in which case the gallery is open and closed the following day.)
Telephone｜+81-3-6459-3205

[Artist talk]
January 22^nd 19:00-20:00
Capacity 15 persons
Participation Fee: 1000 Yen (By reservation only, sales start online on January 7^th at 19:00)
*Japanese version only
>>>TICKET<<<

Sudo Ayano captures her subjects with a desire to transform that transcends gender. Her highly idealized images seem to fit in the space between shojo manga and photography. In her early years, Sudo added designs and decorations digitally to her photos and after printing, she would apply rhinestones and glitter. Her goal was to photographically recreate the world as she and her subjects saw it. Since Gespenster, her 2013 series that centered around girls who went missing, her works have expanded on this theme of going between imaginary worlds and reality.

Vita Machinicalis, Sudo’s series of photographs of human subjects as androids, explores the delicate beauty that wavers between the virtual and real. Her inspiration for the series came in 2018 before the COVID pandemic when she was walking down the deserted city streets of Tokyo in the dead of night. She felt an eeriness to the high-rise buildings and futuristic architecture that seemed not like homes for humans but for machines. That world, where machines live as humans do now, might not be so far in the future. When that time comes, how will we design the appearance of these machines? Currently, we can make ourselves look like dolls with photo editing software. Some even endeavor to make machines in the image of humans with computer generated imagery like digitally adding wrinkles and moles. In the present age where the desire for reality intersects with the reality we seek in the virtual, what is beauty and what is identity? Sudo’s works have the power to question our values.

In this exhibition we will reconfigure Vita Machinicalis to accommodate Sudo’s newer works.

Ayano Sudo
Born in Osaka in 1986. Sudo’s photography captures her subjects with a sense of idealism and a desire for transformation that often transcends gender. The images might remind the viewer of shojo manga, comics for adolescent girls. She uses photographic printing paper with a unique texture and decorates them with rhinestones and glitter which sparkle under the lights of the exhibition space. She has exhibited her works domestically and internationally. In 2011 she won the Mio photo award given by Yasumasa Morimura. Three years later in 2014, Gesprenster, her series of self-portraits where she dressed up as missing young girls, won the Canon New Cosmos of Photography competition. In 2018 her work was featured in the group show, I know something about love, Asian Contemporary Photography at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum. She also has a photobook with the same title published by the French publisher Holoholo Books. In addition to her exhibitions, she also is active as a photographer shooting for various magazine publications.

[Related Exhibition]

Ayano Sudo “Anima / Animus”
Date | January 7 – 30, 2022
Venue｜NADiff Gallery
Telephone｜+81-3-3446-4977
Open Hours｜13:00 – 19:00
The gallery is closed on Mondays that are not national holidays. (Except when Monday falls on a holiday, in which case the gallery is open and closed the following day.)
Website｜http://www.nadiff.com

Sudo Ayano is a photographer who captures her subjects with a desire to transform that transcends gender. Her highly idealized images seem to fit in the space between shojo manga and photography. For her 2013 series Gespenster that centered around girls who went missing, Sudo won the Canon New Cosmos Photography competition. Her works continue to expand on this theme of going between imaginary worlds and reality.
To commemorate the publishing of a limited-edition photobook printed by Canon’s Dream Lab, we would like to present her Anima/Animus series that was taken in the home of the late painter, Kaneko Kuniyoshi who passed away in 2015, up until it was torn down in 2019.
Sudo had harbored a strong feeling that she had to seek out Kaneko as some have often pointed similarities between their artistic worlds. However, he passed away before she had the opportunity to meet him. Impelled by the “cruel reality that the chance to meet him no long existed in this world” (quoted from art critic Sawaragi Noi’s contribution to Anima/Animus), she was able to realize this project with the cooperation of Kaneko’s family and other involved parties.
The word ‘anima’ in the title of the photobook refers to the unconscious feminine nature in the male, and ‘animus’ refers to the unconscious masculine nature in the female. The closest translation in Japanese might be the word ‘soul.’ The fascinating figures drawn by Kaneko can be said to be the alter egos of his inner soul. We can see traces of how they might have taken form by looking at his home, layered with countless objects that he collected over half a century. Kaneko’s adoration and soul seem to emanate from each object, reaching out to those who visit like a beautiful ghost. Sudo anthropomorphizes that invisible anima and animus in her portraits. In this series, Anima/Animus, she has collected the glimmering shards of soul scattered in that beautiful deteriorating room.
This exhibition will be held at the same time with MEM’s Ayano Sudo exhibition, Vita Machinicalis in the same building. While MEM’s exhibition on the third floor will explore the aesthetic space between the virtual and real, NADiff Gallery in the basement will present a contrasting exhibition that captures the beautiful existence between the world of death and unconsciousness, and the world of life and consciousness. We hope that you will enjoy Sudo’s new works in both of our exhibitions.
We are planning artist talks and other events related to each exhibition.
For details please refer to our websites.

Sudo Ayano Anima/Animus special box set (10 limited editions)

This is a high-quality photobook printed using Dream Lab 5000, a professional photo printer made by Canon. The rich color expression is realized through the wide expression color gamut that is unique to the inkjet technology. The attached print is Sudo’s first monochrome work. Also included is a gelatin silver print which is not included in the photobook.