Weʼre Here on Earth to Be Friends (2022) is a monumentally sized painting featuring the vivid palette and large, dynamic brushstrokes that characterize Kondo Akiʼs work, with the sun in the center illuminating the entire picture. In the foreground are children and animals running around on an expanse of ground, while the sun firmly embraces a withered tree lying on its side against a background of sunflowers. Thick paint in many vigorously applied layers manifests energy that seems sufficient to dispel all the myriad problems plaguing our world.

Underpinning this energy is Kondoʼs faith that every human being is innately able to join hands with others and build a brighter future. The work brims with the artistʼs resilience, capable of transforming destruction into rebirth, despair into recovery, and adversity into vitality, and with her limitless compassion for all living things.

Meanwhile, HIKARI (2015), the first short film directed, written, and storyboarded by Kondo, is screened in the adjacent lecture room. It mixes approximately 14,000 frames of oil-painted animation with live action. The film, in which a protagonist looks back on time spent with his lover dying unbeknownst to anyone, affirms bereaved peopleʼs positive embrace of life despite their loss and fully embodies the theme of “Still Alive.” The 2011 Tohoku earthquake, which she experienced while in graduate school, and subsequent experiences of the death and birth of close family members, are sources of the artistʼs practice of “painting as living itself.”

In addition to having her work selected for the Vision of Contemporary Art (VOCA) 2022 exhibition at the Ueno Royal Museum in Tokyo, Kondo had a comprehensive solo exhibition at the Yamagata Museum of Art in 2021. Her work has been featured in numerous exhibitions, including the four-venue show The Happiness that Exists Here (2021) commemorating the publication of a collection of her works.

Selected Works & Awards

2022

Vision of Contemporary Art (VOCA) 2022, The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo, Japan

2021

Aki Kondo―Stars, Sparkling (solo), Yamagata Museum of Art, Yamagata, Japan

2021

Aki KONDO The Happiness that Exists Here (solo), ShugoArts/PHILIPS Tokyo/Contemporary Art Foundation/Daikanyama Tsutaya Books, Tokyo, Japan

2020

Takamatsu Art Museum Collection + Body and Movement, Takamatsu Art Museum, Kagawa, Japan

Exhibition

• Installation view at Aichi Triennale 2022
• Weʼre Here on Earth to Be Friends, 2022
• Photo: ToLoLo studio