As part of its ongoing support for visual artists, Les filles du calvaire has been working with artists from a wide range of backgrounds for over twenty years. For this edition of Asia Now, Makiko Furuichi creates tentacular watercolors that extend onto the walls. These installations plunge us into a dreamlike, grotesque universe, inhabited by the motif of the hand, plants, animals and the artist’s sacred gaze upon them. Born in Japan, Makiko Furuichi grew up in a temple. This place of life and prayer shaped her animist vision of the world and her relationship with everyday details. Her subjects incorporate a tragicomic dimension, tinged with a feeling that the Japanese know as niyari, symbolizing the encounter between the ugly and the amusing.

Makiko Furuichi has lived and worked in France since 2009. She is a graduate of the École supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Nantes and the Kanazawa University of Fine Arts. From November 2024 to February 2025, she will present a solo exhibition at the Artothèque de Caen, as well as her first solo show at the gallery Les filles du calvaire in spring 2025.