Leiko Ikemura

Leiko Ikemura is an internationally renowned contemporary artist.

Since the 1980s, she has explored themes of transition, transcultural aspects, and collective awareness beyond nations and genders.
The artist seamlessly shifts between luminous, otherworldly and often monumental paintings, introspective drawings and watercolours, glazed terracotta sculptures, glass and ceramics.

Focusing on the transient innocence of childhood, Ikemura’s female spirits are defiant and independent, yet fragile and ethereal, almost ghost-like, bestowing the spirits with a composite power to exist within multiple worlds, between dreaming and waking states.
Mythical hybrid creatures between humans and animals populate her artistic world. Among them, the “Usagi” combines rabbit ears with a female body. First created after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, this figure personifies universal suffering, resilience, and renewal.

Fusing Eastern and Western art – conceiving a realm inspired by East Asian sansuiga painting traditions, old Japanese masters, surrealism, post-war abstraction, and the revival of figurative painting in the 1980s – Ikemura’s spiritual works are imbued with a raw and tender presence that highlights the intimate relationship between human, animal, plant, mineral forms, and cosmology.

Leiko Ikemura (イケムラレイコ, 池村 玲子) was born in Tsu, Mie Prefecture, Japan and is based in Berlin. She studied at the Osaka University of Foreign Studies from 1970–1972, followed by the University of Fine Arts, Seville, Spain from 1973–1978. In 1979, Ikemura moved to Zurich and later, in 1985, to Cologne to pursue a career as an artist. In 1991, Ikemura became a professor of painting at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. Since 2014, she has held a professorship at the Joshibi University of Art and Design near Tokyo.

Ikemura’s work has been included in numerous solo exhibitions, most recently including Albertina, Vienna (2025), Kunstmuseum Chur (2025), HEREDIUM in South Korea (2024), Georg Kolbe Museum Berlin (2023), Feuerle Collection, Berlin (2023), Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, Netherlands (2023), Museo de Arte de Zapopan, Guadalajara (2023), Being Art Museum, Shanghai (2023), Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Berlin (2012 & 2022), Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich (2021), CAC La Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències València (2021), Kunstmuseum Basel (2020), The National Art Center, Tokyo (2019), and Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, Cologne (2015).

Ikemura’s work has also been included in group exhibitions internationally, most recently including at the Bienal de São Paulo (2025), Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden (2023), The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto (2022–-23), 9th Beijing Biennale National Art Museum of China, Beijing (2022), The National Art Center, Tokyo (2022), The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (2022), Shandong Art Museum, Jinan (2022), Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, (2022), The Centre Pompidou, Paris (2021).

She is the recipient of many prestigious awards, including Japan’s Persons of Cultural Merit Award (2025), the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology Award in Japan (2019), the Cologne Fine Art Prize (2014), the August Macke Prize (2009), and the Prize of the Association of German Critics (2001), among others.

Ikemura’s work is held in the permanent collections of international institutions such as the Centre Pompidou Paris, the Albertina, Vienna, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Städel Museum, Frankfurt, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, Museum Kunstpalast, Dusseldorf, Lenbachhaus, Munich, Kunstmuseum Basel, Berlinische Galerie, Kunstmuseum Bern, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur, Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein — Hilti Art Foundation, Vaduz, Kolumba, Cologne, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, National Museum of Art Osaka, National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art Nagoya, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Mie Prefectural Art Museum Tsu City, Being Art Museum, Shanghai, Nevada Museum of Art, Reno (NV), Pola Museum of Art, Hakone, Centro de Arte Caja de Burgos, Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, and the Nordic Watercolour Museum, Skärhamn.