KAORUKO'S AROMAKO INTERVIEW
KAORUKO
Petals, gold leaf, and a gaze that refuses to look away.
She was a teen pop star in Japan before she was a painter in New York. Now KAORUKO builds women out of acrylic, sumi calligraphy and silkscreened kimono silk: women in their own rooms, on their own terms, staring straight back at whoever dares to look. A conversation about tradition, defiance, and everything hiding under a perfectly kawaii surface.
“We can cleverly hide our real motives under our perfect Yamato Nadeshiko faces.”
KAORUKO is a Japanese contemporary artist and former teen pop star based in New York. Her large-scale paintings explore the gap between the idealized Japanese woman and the lived complexity of contemporary female identity. Using acrylic, sumi calligraphy, gold leaf and silkscreened kimono patterns, she depicts women in intimate domestic spaces: often confrontational, often undressed, always looking directly back at the viewer. We have followed her work since her Aromako exhibition at Mike Weiss Gallery in 2011, and this conversation picks up where that fascination began.
From Pop Charts
to Paint Brushes
You had a career as a pop singer in Japan as a teenager, and then moved to New York in 2009 to pursue painting full-time. That's a significant pivot. How did that happen?
I just happened to be a pop singer first before becoming an artist, but I always wanted to be a painter as a kid. When you're young, you want to try all kinds of possibilities. I was one of those opportunity seekers. I went to an audition with a friend one day and got the job. I really got a lot of inspiration from my early career as a pop singer creatively. But painting was always what I wanted to do.
What changed when you moved to New York?
Moving away from Japan, I rediscovered my cultural heritage for the first time. It's ironic: sometimes you can't see things clearly when you're too close to them. I never used kimono patterns as inspiration before I moved here. Being away made me explore what it means to be Japanese through symbols that reflect my own heritage. And then the 2011 earthquake and tsunami happened. Watching my home country suffer from across an ocean shifted something in me. It wasn't just about my family anymore. I started thinking about everyone in Japan. I think my latest work reflects this much larger sense of love and humanity.
The Women Who
Stare Back
Your figures are often in various states of undress, occupying private domestic spaces. Many viewers react with discomfort. What are you actually depicting?
One of the biggest challenges I've faced is conveying my message without people thinking I'm creating hyper-sexualized paintings of women in underwear. I tried to use confrontational imagery to express my thoughts on Japanese culture. Specifically, the role women play socially and politically today versus our history. But it's important to me that these aren't erotic works. They're intimate. There's a difference.
The women I portray are hybrids. They have traditional Japanese cultural values but modern women's characteristics. I like showing their unique nature. In my work, they're relaxed, revealing their bodies in their own comfortable, personal spaces, with traditional textiles as backdrop. I'm trying to capture real modern Japanese women with their complex characters.
You remove the eyebrows from many of your figures. Why?
The figure's expressions aren't about the position of the eyebrows. They're about the essence of a woman. Without eyebrows, you're forced to read the face differently, through the gaze itself, the tilt of the head, the body. The women in my paintings are staring at the person who sees them. They're not performing emotion. They're simply present.
“They're not performing emotion. They're simply present.”
KAORUKO on the eyebrowless gazeKimono Silk &
Quiet Rebellion
You're working within a specific Japanese aesthetic tradition: Ukiyo-e prints, wave motifs, luck symbols. How do you balance referencing that tradition with pushing against cultural expectations of what Japanese women should be?
When we use the word “kawaii” to describe Japanese women, I picture those pristine, modest women, like delicate dianthus flowers. In Japan, they're called “Yamato Nadeshiko,” meaning women with traditional Japanese beauty. They're supportive, respectful of their men. I think Japanese women today still possess those characteristics to a certain extent, but we've evolved into a different breed. We can cleverly hide our real motives under our perfect Yamato Nadeshiko faces.
That's what I'm exploring. The gap between what we're supposed to be and who we actually are. I use traditional textiles and patterns not to reject that heritage, but to say: this is mine. I'll use it. I'll inhabit it. But I won't disappear into it.
Some might argue your work is critiquing Japanese culture. Is it?
It's not a critique of the culture itself. It's a critique of the fiction at the center of it. Women are the same in their inner core, whether they're in the United States or Japan. Even though in Japan the culture demands the show of fragility and cuteness on the surface, that's really universal. In fairy tales, the princess has to fight for the prince. In today's world, we also have to fight for what we want. The culture just tells us to do it quietly.
Yes, the Ex Pop Star
Can Actually Paint
You mentioned something interesting earlier: people finding it hard to believe that an ex pop singer can actually paint. Has that skepticism shaped your work?
As a kid, I always liked drawing and was excited to create my own art. Because my work was fairly good, people often thought my parents were helping me. Maybe I'm still traumatized by that, because I feel people still think an ex pop singer can't actually paint. But honestly, my experience in pop music gave me tools that have been invaluable. I understand image construction, visual language, how people consume and interpret what they see. That's all in the paintings.
How did you feel showing this work in a New York gallery context?
Knowing these works would be on view in a contemporary gallery in New York made me very conscious of how the work would be seen from both Western and Eastern perspectives. I was worried about how a Western audience might interpret undressed Asian women. That's a real anxiety. But I decided to proceed anyway, and I think what's emerged is a conversation that wasn't possible before: one where Japanese feminism speaks in its own terms, using its own visual language.
Eyes Up Here:
The Gaze, Held
Your paintings often feature women making eye contact with the viewer. That's a deliberate formal choice.
Women are often looked at, but we're not taught to look back. The direct gaze, refusing to look away, to defer, to perform modesty, is itself a political act. My women see. They stare. They hold your gaze steady with the knowledge of their own bodies, their own desires, their own complexity.
What's the most interesting response you've gotten to the work?
That's hard to say. People are often shocked, sometimes uncomfortable. Some people see what I'm trying to do immediately. Others need time. I think the people who get it are those who understand that the body and desire and complexity aren't separate from tradition. They exist inside it, alongside it, always.
“This is mine. I'll use it. I'll inhabit it. But I won't disappear into it.”
KAORUKO on inheriting a traditionWhere the
Butterflies Go Next
What are your greatest artistic influences?
My inspirations have shifted over time. Early on, it was my own experience. Being a pop singer, navigating that world, understanding how image works. Now it's broader. It's about witnessing what's happening in the world, in Japan, in women's lives. It's about how we think as women. I believe women possess a great ability to think intuitively rather than analytically. We think in our wombs, not just in our heads. I believe that's our strength, and we're evolving every day. I want my paintings to honor that evolution.
Where is the work going?
I'm always exploring what it means to be Japanese, what it means to be a woman holding multiple identities at once. The paintings will keep changing. But the core will remain the same: women as subjects, not objects. Women with depth, contradiction, power. Women who refuse to disappear.
KAORUKO's work has been shown at Mike Weiss Gallery and in private and institutional collections. She lives and works in New York City. More of her work can be found on her Artsy profile. This interview is part of Antakly Projects' ongoing series with contemporary artists.
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