Kei Ito

Kei Ito is a Japanese installation artist, conceptual photographer, and sculptor.

Ito’s work is deeply rooted in the bombing of Hiroshima, which his late grandfather survived. Despite the generations that passed, the event inflicted heavy trauma upon the remainder of his family.

As a result, a deep sense of intergenerational loss underlies much of Ito’s work. He describes his work as being consistently aware of its own mortality – the possibility of death – and he uses this awareness to explore how contemporary approaches to international security, heritage, and identity are affected.

Ito is also concerned with “invisible” things like radiation, memory, and unseen histories. To Ito, remembering these stories, including past tragedies, teaches us how to prevent contemporary ones. But he does so not through the glaring and grotesque, but with serene and contemplative imagery.

Learn More

• Website
• Instagram
• International Center of Photography Biography
• Interview: Elongated Shadows
• Royal Ontario Museum: Echoes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the Art of Kei Ito
• Georgia Museum of Art: Interview with Kei Ito
• Georgia Museum of Art: Kei Ito and Binh Danh on Staring at the Face of the Sun

Selected Works

• A Dream of Armageddon (2023): This multimedia installation illuminates a dire sociopolitical landscape but warns of an even direr future. Ito displays a tapestry of model homes, both Eastern and Western, suspended in a painful juxtaposition of light and dark, existence and isolation.
• Sungazing Scroll (2015): This 200-foot-long scroll combines Ito’s breathing patterns with sunlight to create a ‘register of his life’. Affected by a force as powerful as the sun – an atom bomb – he pays homage to his family’s history.
• Total Sense of Absorption (2023): This multimedia piece was performed live on February 28th, 2023. Wearing a hazmat suit and holding a uranium bowl, Ito walked upon darkroom paper to illustrate an American flag and, in doing so, protest the neglect of contaminated Superfund Sites in the U.S.

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Discussion Questions

1. What is the importance of “history” in Kei Ito’s work?
   • More importantly, as art historians, what do you think history can teach us about the present? Does this inspire you to study art history? If not, what does?
2. Watch the video for Each Tolling Sun and imagine yourself walking through the exhibit, scanning the images. What do you think this work is telling us?
   • Afterward, read Ito’s description of the work.
3. Choose one of Ito’s works —or use Each Tolling Sun—and reflect on his choices as an artist. Why might he be using certain techniques or mediums and depicting certain subjects? How might this tie to his vision as an artist?

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This artist was submitted by Ophelia Lovell, student at the University of Central Florida.

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