Midori Hirose
Artist Statement
In alchemy, materials transform from base metals to precious ones. Midori Hirose’s work investigates similar phase shifts, exploring material changes, both perceived and actual. As Hirose investigates and alters materials, she works to identify their structural polarities and absolutes, playfully exploring the elements of forms to concretize, reveal, or catalyze their different states. Research, materials, techniques, and metaphors exist as an evolving taxonomy of physical “models.” Hirose calls her relationship to this history “material storytelling.” She sees her sculptures as dimensional illustrations of these investigations.
Committee
- Rebecca Cummins (Photo/Media)
- Ellen Garvens (Photo/Media)
- Aaron Flint Jamison (Photo/Media)
Commentary
Read the interview with Midori Hirose by Hagere Selam “shimby” Zegeye-Gebrehiwot.
Hirose has a poetic praxis. Her approach to research, materials and subjects engage with points of inquiry rooted in wordplay. Hirose is serious about whimsy. Her work navigates contemporary issues like mutual aid and solidarity while reframing what we understand as worthy or important. She centers the shape, history and scale of the peanut, which functions as a small portal that engages ecology, recyclability and play.
— shimby
Bio
Midori Hirose (b. 1973, Hood River, Oregon) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Portland, Oregon. Her work has been exhibited nationally at the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, California; Disjecta Contemporary Art Center for the Portland Biennial; group exhibition at The Lumber Room in Portland, Oregon; and has shown internationally in group exhibitions for the Carian Project in Turkey; East/West Project, Berlin, Germany; and at the Newberg Gallery in Glasgow, Scotland. Hirose performed at Performance Works NW and in several Portland Institute for Contemporary Art TBA festivals, Oregon. She has received grants and awards from the Regional Arts and Culture Foundation and the Ford Family Foundation. In addition, Hirose is a core member of Snack Bloc, founding member of Trash Hackers Collective and CHIME.
Education
- Master of Fine Arts, University of Washington, Seattle, 2021
- Bachelor of Fine Arts, Pacific Northwest College of Art
