HOUSTON, TX.- The Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University announces that its summer 2026 exhibition features the work of Masako Miki (b. 1973, Osaka, Japan). The artist’s first solo show in Texas, this site-specific, sculptural installation is populated with spirits, shapeshifters, and other changelings animated by a longing for recognition and connection amid a rapidly changing world. Rendered through Miki’s vibrant visual language in a style informed by twentieth-century art historical movements, including European Surrealism and Japanese manga, this exhibition interprets themes from Japanese folklore and brings them into relation with the present, reflecting the artist’s interest in storytelling and myth as forces that shape how the world is understood.
“The empathetic throughline of Miki’s work draws visitors together into a space that is both entirely original and deeply familiar,” said Alison Weaver, co-curator and Suzanne Deal Booth Executive Director for the Moody Center for the Arts. “Amid global conflict and widening cultural divides, in the year following the eightieth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this exhibition offers a bridge across time and tradition to demonstrate how shared narratives can foster connections across seemingly insurmountable differences.”
Central to Miki’s practice, and to the folkloric traditions from which it draws, is the belief that all beings and things contain a spirit. Specifically, the influence of Shinto animism informs Miki’s sculptures of everyday objects and natural elements—gourds, dolls, trees, and others—that assume human scale and a vivid sense of character. Constructed from felt layered over wood armatures, Miki’s creatures form abstract silhouettes that feel both natural and fantastical.
Questions that inform Miki's approach include: Why do some stories live on for generations while others are forgotten? And how do strangers relate to one another despite cultural and political divides? According to the artist, “[These] mythologies have the potential to counter past narratives such as the legacy of World War II in Japan and the history of slavery in the United States. My characters are ordinary but have extraordinary powers; they are secular but are attuned to sacred traditions. As a collective, they advocate for both individual and collective agency, and the importance of stories as unifying systems in today’s complex world.”
This exhibition is curated by Associate Curator Claudia Mattos with Suzanne Deal Booth Executive Director Alison Weaver.
Bringing mythic and mundane worlds into contact, Masako Miki focuses her Moody presentation on yōkai—supernatural entities taking the form of beings, objects, and apparitions—particularly those that appear in the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons (Hyakki Yagyō), a legend dating to medieval Japan. In this tale, discarded household objects, from a monk’s string of prayer beads to abandoned umbrellas, come to life and gather in an unruly procession, making themselves known to a world that has failed to recognize their presence.
“By attuning viewers to forms of life that often go overlooked, Miki raises questions about belonging, resilience, and who—or what—has been cast aside or forgotten,” said Claudia Mattos, co-curator and Associate Curator for the Moody Center for the Arts. “Mindfully arranged in our gallery, each grouping suggests companionship, conspiracy, or collectivity, allowing sculptures to assert a presence in relation to the space, the viewer, and one another.”
In tandem with the exhibition, the Moody will screen episodes of GeGeGe no Kitarō, a Japanese animated series based on a manga created in 1960 by artist Shigeru Mizuki (1922–2015), a World War II veteran whose work was shaped by his experiences of war. Credited with reviving interest in Japanese yōkai in twentieth-century popular culture, the story follows a childlike yōkai named Kitarō who moves between human and supernatural realms and intervenes when conflict arises between them. The episodes were influential to Miki’s development growing up, and their contemporary reimagining of folklore resonates with themes that shape her practice today.
Masako Miki: Shapeshifters, Sprites, and Spirits invites visitors to imagine how traditional stories can speak to contemporary sociopolitical realities. The exhibition makes the case that expressions of joy and the human imagination are radical acts with the potential to disrupt prevailing cultural discourse to imagine a more compassionate, harmonious, humane future.
Masako Miki (b. 1973, Osaka, Japan) holds an MFA from San José State University, CA, and a BFA from Notre Dame de Namur University, Belmont, CA. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco; de Young Museum, San Francisco; Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, CA; ICA San José, CA; and KMAC Contemporary Art Museum, Louisville, KY. Her work is in the permanent collections of SFMOMA; BAMPFA; the McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, CA; Collección SOLO, Madrid; Byrd Hoffman Water Mill Foundation, New York; and Tweed Museum of Art, Duluth, MN, among others. Miki lives and works in Berkeley, CA.
