Sayako Kishimoto

Sayako Kishimoto (岸本 清子, Kishimoto Sayako; October 1, 1939 – December 1, 1988) was a Japanese artist who worked across mediums including paintings, drawings, and performances. Best known as one of the few female members in the short-lived art collective Neo-Dada Organizers, Kishimoto investigated female identity and the definition of a female avant-garde artist through destruction-oriented practices in the 1960s. Beginning in the 1970s, Kishimoto's interests shifted toward examining and questioning the political power structure of Japanese society as well as that of the U.S.-Japan relations, and she briefly adopted the style of Pop Art. Later on, she expanded the scope of her artistic inquiry and began to invent a worldview of her own. Kishimoto envisioned a society in which everyone would strive to reach the bottom of a hierarchy instead of the top as in real life. Kishimoto translated her utopian view onto several canvases in the 80s, where motifs of animals and expressive strokes constituted modern allegories. While combatting cancer on the sickbed during the last few years of her life, Kishimoto continued to probe the personal and the political through expressive works on paper as well as performances.