Chieko Murasugi at Red Hat
100 E. Davie Street
Raleigh NC, 27601
November 2022 - March 2023
Chieko in her studio.
Artist Bio
Chieko Murasugi is an abstract painter and mixed media artist who was born in Tokyo, raised in Toronto, and lived in San Francisco for 20 years before moving to North Carolina in 2012. Trained as a visual scientist and artist, she has a PhD in Experimental Psychology (York U) and an MFA in Studio Art (UNC-CH). Murasugi has exhibited her work nationally in galleries and museums, including the Mint Museum, Greenhill, UNCG’s Gatewood Gallery, and the Weatherspoon Art Museum. Her paintings are included in the collections of TIAA, Honeywell, the City of Raleigh, and Duke University. She is a co-founder of BASEMENT, an experimental, artist-run project space in Chapel Hill.
From left to right, Box Seat, Glacial, and Transpose
Artist Statement
Created in 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, my Shiro Kuro (White Black) works allude to dualities that exemplified those disquieting months: past and future, hope and despair, fragility and resilience.
Speaking through materials, I employed cheesecloth, an airy fabric once used to wrap napalm jelly in incendiary bombs. My choice references the WWII fire bombings of Tokyo, which my parents barely escaped, and which irrevocably altered their futures and their psyches. I coated the cheesecloth with rabbit skin glue, a sizing used since the Renaissance to seal canvases and when wet, glistens like jelly. When applied to cheesecloth, the glue stiffens and strengthens the fabric while remaining susceptible to moisture.
Shiro Kuro’s abstract compositions, punctuated by sections of blue ink and pages of old diary pages, embody both the vulnerability and potency of the human spirit across time.
Exhibition Checklist + Pricing
Glacial, $1200, cheesecloth, rabbit skin glue, paper, ink
Transpose, $1200, cheesecloth, rabbit skin glue, paper, ink
Box Seat, $600, cheesecloth, rabbit skin glue, paper, ink
to inquire about purchasing a piece please email Ant (they/them)!