“As someone who grew up in a clean and safe environment that favored convenience, my affinity with camera equipment was an extremely violent one.”

For Lieko Shiga, the space-time of photography was a salvation and excitement greater than “death.” In 2008, Shiga moved to Miyagi Prefecture, where she became involved in the local community and continued producing works related to memories that span generations, thinking about life from imaginations of death, and the relationship between nature and human society. Her experiences in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake, which saw the breaking down of social functions along the coast and the unforgiving disposition of the laws of nature, link back to “recovery” efforts seen in postwar Japan, inciting an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. Shiga, through her creative process and production, seeks the roots of the human spirit. Her works are intent on visualizing, through the medium of photography, what she calls “the eternal present,” a moment that is neither past nor future suspended in space-time. They are photographic spaces in which the viewer can see their own body and consciousness reflected back as if looking in a mirror.

In 2022, Shiga’s work appeared in SHÉHÉRAZADE AT NIGHT, Palais de Tokyo, Paris; JAPAN. BODY_PERFORM_LIVE: Resistance and Resilience in Japanese Contemporary Art, Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan; I have not loved (enough or worked), Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, Australia; 17th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul; Kyoto Experiment 2022, Kyoto; and Merzbow, Balázs Pándi & Richard Pinhas with Lieko Shiga ‘Bipolar’, Kyoto Art Theater Shunjuza, Kyoto.