The annual "No Border" exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, received unprecedented media coverage this year. Titled "From Nihonga to Nihonga," it ran from January to March, and featured fast-rising stars, including Hisashi Tenmyouya, Fuyuko Matsui and Kumi Machida, all of whom were spuriously labeled as continuing the traditions of the nihonga -- literally "Japanese painting" -- style.
Tenmyouya has already found art world fame stateside, while the stunning Matsui is regularly featured on the pages of glossy magazines. Machida, however, remains more of an enigma, all the more fascinating because critics hailed her as the controversial show's most promising talent: an assertion supported by the fact that three of her works -- "Hiking," "First Contact," and "Relation" -- are already in the public collection of New York's MoMA.
The reclusive Machida agreed to speak to The Japan Times at the subterranean Nishimura Gallery in Tokyo's genteel Ginza district, where her work will be on show until July 1. Clad all in black with a hat pulled down over her eyes, the 36-year-old artist exuded a fragility at once unnerving and endearing.