Hinako Kagawa (*1997 in Tokyo/Japan) studied aesthetics at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Tokyo University of the Arts and subsequently completed a master's degree in printmaking at the same university.

She describes her artistic intentions in the following current statement:

My artistic practice is located in the field of tension between feminism and narrative painting. With a characteristically fine touch and a precise eye for detail, I develop new, contemporary forms of expression in narrative imagery. A central field of inspiration for me is religious art - especially Christian motifs in medieval manuscripts - which I re-interrogate in the context of queer theology. Themes such as care and feminist perspectives are at the centre of my work. I mainly work with lithography, artist's books and drawing.

Rika Nemoto, (*1997 in Akira/Japan), an equally young writer and curator currently living and working in Austria, is curating the presentation of works and reflects on Hinako Kagawa's artistic oeuvre as follows:

In Kagawa's most recent large-scale work - Where did my wings go? (2025) - rectangular pieces of washi paper are mounted next to each other; the gaps between them are reminiscent of grids or the wooden skeleton of shoji doors. Viewers are forced to assume the role of the higher beings who once looked down on humans - we look through a grid at a transgender person in a depressed state lying on a bed. This contemplation is accompanied by a feeling of unease. A speech bubble reads in English:

Sometimes I don't think we're born women/men at all.

It's like your wings get clipped,
and then everyone's so surprised
when you don't know how to fly.

Translation:
Sometimes I don't believe that we are born as women or men at all.
It's like your wings get clipped,

and then everyone's so surprised,
when you don't know how to fly.

But here in Kagawa's visual world, there are also butterflies whose wings have not been clipped. They leave the wardrobe and the house, flutter to blooming flowers in the backyard (Backyard, 2016), rest in a park (《乙女のたとえ》Metaphor for maidens, 2021), or defy lightning and downpours (Calling, 2024). When they are tired of flying, they return home - a place that is sometimes uncomfortable, but sometimes also warming and protective. A roof against storms and rain. A wardrobe full of colourful jumpers (A Letter to a young Daphne, 2023). But not all butterflies find their way back. Some get lost in the deep forest and never return home (series about death, 《葬列》Trauerzug, 2024-2025). Our gay and transgender friends in particular have been stripped of their grieving rights in a society based on "heterosexual melancholy" - because there is a lack of cultural practices that publicly recognise the loss of same-sex love. During the AIDS crisis, the dead were not mourned, but homosexual people were portrayed as representatives of the disease itself. Today, queer and trans people are at the mercy of the vastness and hatred of the internet, they are pathologised and socially degraded. They are condemned to a dishonourable death - at the mercy of the all-too-invisible, indifferent angels outside the square closet. But we - with our pictures and poems - erect a gravestone for them. Grief is allowed here. Here we are allowed to cry.

In conclusion, just one request:
Take these butterflies with you.
Cross the rainbow bridge with them.
For all our companions who have died.

Vernissage

Saturday, 31. May 2025,6 pm

and introductory talk

with the artist Hinako Kagawa

and the curator Rika Nemoto