Tokuko Shimizu has developed a visual language that is quite her own. With an ongoing interest in art, history, culture, and a serious commitment to exploring diverse techniques, she works in oil, Japanese painting, illustration, weaving, traditional Japanese dye and fabric patchwork collage. The majority of her pieces were made between house chores, while raising two children in a Tokyo residence. Tokuko’s creative path evolved in close proximity to everyday life, serving as an escape from her expected role within the family and societal pressures.
In 2002 Tokuko Shimizu’s artist daughter Miho commissioned her mother to make a poster using textiles for an exhibition with her artist group Danger Museum with colleague Øyvind Renberg. Tokuko’s piece was full of humor and attracted the attention of many of the exhibition’s visitors. And so Tokuko Shimizu’s textile poster was born. What had been a one-off artwork developed into a collaboration with her daughter that would continue for almost ten years, causing her work to be swept from the family home and transported onto the stage of contemporary art. As Miho and Øyvind traveled with their projects, Tokuko’s textile work proliferated: a new poster for each new exhibition.
(Maybe a line at the end about «now Tokuko’s textile posters can be enjoyed in a limited edition book published by Flick Studio”.)