Who Was Not Created By A Woman

Who Was Not Created By A Woman?

The mother’s vagina is the portal to the world. Ayakoh Furukawa’s work of vagina explores universality of motherhood.

Inside our mothers’ womb, we are protected as a singular newborn life. However, once we enter into the world, we are inevitably faced with the irrationalities of the world, and thus forget the original connection with our mothers. In other words, within the realm of the mother’s womb, we cannot be separated from our mothers.

Our mother’s womb might have been an Eden of Earth, and we are entangled in a constant struggle to regain that site. By becoming mothers and experiencing maternal instinct, women realize the gender bestowed upon them. On the other hand, men would never physically become mothers, and could never possess their mothers as their own.

Furukawa’s knitted objects convey her sense of loss for not becoming a mother, as well as her subconscious want of bringing her mother, who she left in Japan, within her reach.

The women in her text drawings captivate viewers through their strong presence and gaze. Moreover, they express an universal beauty that differs from commercialized images of women.

This exhibition presents the conflict between humanism, her views as a human, and feminism, her beliefs as a woman, within the artist.