“Clay is not watercolors,” says Rhiannon Paget, the curator of Asian art at The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota. “It’s dirty, it’s physical, and it requires space, specialized tools, and equipment. You need a big kiln and someone to help you move things in and out of it. You need a support network.”
For much of history, support was exactly what was missing for female artists in Japan—and other countries—in the realm of ceramics. Tradition, as well as governmental initiatives, encouraged and expected women to be at the forefront of domestic duties, not artistic studios. Those with talent who pursued a formal art education were anticipated to be informed consumers rather than creators, even though many perfected the technique in the studios of their male counterparts.
This slice of unfair art history informs Radical Clay (through May 11, 2025), a new exhibition at the Ringling that showcases more than 40 works from 36 Japanese women who are shifting the paradigm of international ceramics with their inventiveness of subject and technique. Curated by the Art Institute of Chicago’s Janet Katz, the exhibition marks the first time the collection has been shown outside of Illinois.
The show represents women of three generations. Tsuboi Asuka, Ogawa Mahiko, and Mishima Kimiyo—born in the 1930s and ’40s—lead the charge with their works in terms of technique and subject matter. Kimiyo became known for her extreme realism of everyday objects, like trash, which was considered radical by the Japanese who revere cleanliness. Those artists born in the ’60s and ’70s, ventured even further, stepping into the grotesque.
“There’s a certain audacity in some of the pieces,” says Paget, pointing to biomorphic selections from Oishi Sayaka and Kawura Saki whose glaze techniques lend realism to objects that appear inspired by human organs. “They’re astonishing and in some ways hard to look at. It takes a certain amount of confidence to create something that is revolting like that.”
While the works in Radical Clay are brilliant examples of contemporary art regardless of the artists’ genders, the societal hurdles their creators had to overcome make them all that more notable. “A society that has been historically patriarchal presented a lot of challenges to women pursuing an artistic career at high level,” says Paget. “These Japanese women are really at the pinnacle of their field in terms of their mastery of this medium. They’re incredibly imaginative and [the collection is] an astonishing variety of technique, concept, and form.”
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Text by Kelley Marcellus
Photos courtesy of Ringling Museum of Art
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