Born in 1983 in Japan, Natsuko Uchino graduated from Cooper Union in New York in 2007. Her journey is shaped as much by agricultural and rural experience as by the reinvestment of traditional techniques in a sensitive and learning-oriented exploration.
Working with clay is one of the entry points into her work. It highlights a commitment of the gesture through time, seeking to build an original path in the face of the accelerating mechanical and digital transformation of production and subsistence methods.
Natsuko Uchino thus develops a cross-disciplinary practice between art and ecology. Through a holistic approach to art, she revisits the history of techniques and « savoir-faire », subverting hierarchies between disciplines. In doing so, she aims to reacquaint herself with the manufacturing, transformation and assembly processes associated with craftsmanship and vernacular techniques.
For her first solo exhibition in a French museum institution, Natsuko Uchino intertwines narratives within spaces. More than a simple homage to the American writer Ursula K. Le Guin, «Fiction Theory Basket» sketches a way of inhabiting the world between the permanence of gestures and secular knowledge, the political ecology of reuse, and the experimentation of matter.
Natsuko Uchino lives and works in Belvézet (Gard). She is coordinator of the Art and Geo-Materials (MAGMA) Master’s program at ESAD TALM – Le Mans. Natsuko Uchino is represented by Galerie Allen (Paris) and Sorry We Are Closed (Brussels).
Natsuko Uchino, Fiction Theory Basket, 2024, exhibition view, Musée d’art contemporain de la Haute-Vienne, RochechouartNatsuko Uchino, Fiction Theory Basket, 2024, exhibition view, Musée d’art contemporain de la Haute-Vienne, RochechouartNatsuko Uchino, Fiction Theory Basket, 2024, exhibition view, Musée d’art contemporain de la Haute-Vienne, RochechouartNatsuko Uchino, Fiction Theory Basket, 2024, exhibition view, Musée d’art contemporain de la Haute-Vienne, RochechouartNatsuko Uchino, Fiction Theory Basket, 2024, exhibition view, Musée d’art contemporain de la Haute-Vienne, RochechouartNatsuko Uchino, Blown Glass in Earth and Bricks (Bubble architecture/ Shapeless form) I – VII, 2023, glass, variable dimensions, produced by Jean-Charles Miot and Laetitia Andrighetto, with the patronage of Fondation d’entreprise Martell, CognacNatsuko Uchino, Fiction Theory Basket, 2024, exhibition view, Musée d’art contemporain de la Haute-Vienne, RochechouartNatsuko Uchino, Stone collected from the CIRIR (Centre International de Recherche et de Restitution sur l’Impact de Rochechouart), and photograph from the series Photographie I-XIX, 2013-2024, silver print, 18 x 27 cmNatsuko Uchino, Squid Currency, 2021, bronze, imprints on cuttlebone, produced by Fonderie atelier les Fusioles, Esméralda Poncet and Bastien Roiland, St-Jean de MaruejolsNatsuko Uchino, Hispano-Moresque ceramic, 2020-2022, glazed earthenware, variable dimensions, produced by Cerámica Los Arrayannes, GranadaNatsuko Uchino, Hispano-Moresque ceramic, 2020-2022, glazed earthenware, variable dimensions, produced by Cerámica Los Arrayannes, GranadaNatsuko Uchino, Dwellings / Habitat II (extraction, concretion, bedrock), 2024, installation, variable dimensionsNatsuko Uchino, Dwellings / Habitat II (extraction, concretion, bedrock), 2024, installation (detail), variable dimensionsNatsuko Uchino, Dwellings / Habitat III (cohabitation, metamorphosis, harvesting), 2024, installation, variable dimensionsNatsuko Uchino, Fiction Theory Basket, 2024, exhibition view, Musée d’art contemporain de la Haute-Vienne, RochechouartNatsuko Uchino, Fiction Theory Basket, 2024, exhibition view, Musée d’art contemporain de la Haute-Vienne, RochechouartNatsuko Uchino, Fiction Theory Basket, 2024, exhibition view, Musée d’art contemporain de la Haute-Vienne, RochechouartNatsuko Uchino, Fiction Theory Basket, 2024, exhibition view, Musée d’art contemporain de la Haute-Vienne, RochechouartNatsuko Uchino, Fiction Theory Basket, 2024, exhibition view, Musée d’art contemporain de la Haute-Vienne, Rochechouart
