Mia Takemoto
Born 1997 in Brisbane, Australia. Lives and works in Edinburgh, Scotland
Mia Takemoto is a British-Japanese artist working in Edinburgh. Her art practice celebrates cultural hybridity, bringing together techniques, materials and themes to create a new, transnational style that bears her unique signature. As a British-Japanese artist born in Australia and currently living in Scotland, her work is strongly influenced by the cultures she is rooted-in and have routed through.
In her paintings, she explores the role of food, family and the home in bridging the gaps between her cultural identities. More specifically, she is drawn to the concept of "third-cultural space", which is made up of components to which the individual feels that they belong and is characterised by a hybridity of cultures.
Takemoto's expression of cultural hybridity is also reflected in her choice of materials and processes, which oscillate between East and West. Traditional Asian materials such as sumi ink, origami collage, and egg tempera are used in paintings of contemporary art, where the process of preparing the materials becomes as important as the painting itself.
Mia Takemoto is currently completing an MA in Fine Art and History of Art at the University of Edinburgh. In 2019, she enrolled on the BFA Visual Art programme at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
Recent solo and group exhibitions include: RISING STARS, The Royal Society of British Artists (2021); Hampstead Art Society, The Fitzrovia Gallery, London (2021); Room With a View online exhibition, Google Arts & Culture (2020), Works on Paper, Rafiki Gallery, Edinburg (2020); Printmaking Vol. 1, Rafiki Gallery, Edinburg (2021). In 2020, Takemoto's painting Chess Match was longlisted for the 2020 Scottish Portrait Award; and was featured by SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art).
