Ishigaki Katsuko, kishaba Housing District, US Marine Corps FacilityⅠ, Oil on canvas, 2018, 72.7×90.8 cm
石垣 克子 Ishigaki Katsuko
Familiar Landscapes
Saturday, February 22 – Saturday, March 22, 2025
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 22, 17:00-19:00
Gallery Talk : Ishigaki Katsuko x Amano Taro（Chief Curator, Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery）
Saturday, February 22, 17:00〜 (in Japanese language only)
Hours: Tuesday-Saturday 12:00-19:00 (Closed on Mon, Sun, Public holidays)
Press Release
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MISA SHIN GALLERY is pleased to announce Familiar Landscapes, a solo exhibition by Ishigaki Katsuko, on view from Saturday, February 22, to Saturday, March 22, 2025.
Ishigaki, born in Okinawa in 1967, is an artist who attempt to capture the shifting landscapes of Okinawa, including U.S. military bases, military housing, and postwar architecture and cityscapes. For a generation who grow up seeing U.S. military bases as an integral part of life, these landscapes coexist in parallel with the pristine natural scenery of Ishigaki Island’s lagoons, where the artist spent her early childhood.
In 2008, Ishigaki relocated her studio to Koza (the former name of Okinawa City), adjacent to Kadena Air Base, the largest U.S. military installation in the Far East. During her daily commute from her home in Naha, the base gradually became part of her everyday scenery. Over the course of a decade, Ishigaki began to paint the sight in an attemp to commit it to memory.
Okinawa comprises just 0.6% of Japan’s total land area, yet it hosts approximately 70% of the U.S. military facilities in the country. While some land previously devoted to military bases has been returned and repurposed into new urban developments, the landscapes surrounding these bases remain in constant flux. Reflecting on this, Ishigaki notes, “If the day ever comes when all this land is completely returned, these landscapes will vanish. I don’t want to pretend they were never there.” Through flat colors and deliberate brushstrokes, Ishigaki captures military facilities bathed in uniform sunlight, foreign residential quarters framed by fences, traditional homes left untouched by development, and weathered concrete houses with peeling paint. The familiar landscapes that we take for granted in Okinawa has a different meaning from the transformation of landscapes through scrap-and-build that has been taking place in every other city in recent years.
Ishigaki’s landscape of Okinawa invite viewers to reflect on the tension between mournfulness and brightness that defines the region’s complex realities. Her work encourages a reconsideration of the everyday landscapes that shift with history and the evocative power they hold.
Ishigaki Katsuko, Along the way – Tomigusuku, Oil on canvas,
2023, 27.3×22 cm
Ishigaki Katsuko, The View from a Hotel V, Oil on canvas, 2023, 27.3×22 cm
Ishigaki Katsuko, The View from a Hotel II, 2023, Oil on canvas, 60.6×72.7 cm
石垣克子 Ishigaki Katsuko
Born in Okinawa in 1967, where she continues to live and work, Ishigaki Katsuko graduated from the Department of Fine Arts, Painting Course, at Okinawa Prefectural University of Arts. Her major exhibitions include Uncertain Landscape at Azamino Civic Art Gallery (Kanagawa, 2018), Mabuni Peace Project (Okinawa, 2019), the Okinawa Asia International Peace Art Festival (Okinawa, 2020), Portraits of Ryukyu at the Okinawa Prefectural Museum & Art Museum (Okinawa, 2021), Fukki-ato-watashitachi-no-nichijou-wa-doko-ni-kaetta-no-ka (After “Coming Back”: Where Did Our Everyday Lives Return To?) at Sakima Art Museum (Okinawa, 2022), Roppongi Crossing 2022: Coming & Going at Mori Art Museum (Tokyo, 2022), Ocean, Islands and Mountains: Living with Chitsuzuki at Tsunagi Art Museum (Kumamoto, 2023), and The 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (Brisbane, Australia, 2024).