SPUTNIKO!
MakSputniko! is a multi-media artist and filmmaker creating works on themes of gender, feminism and technology. Her work has been exhibited at the MoMA, Pompidou Metz, V&A, the Cooper Hewitt, and she was awarded Vogue Japan Woman of the Year in 2013. Sputniko! taught at the MIT Media Lab as an Assistant Professor and was the founder of Design Fiction Group from 2013 to 2017. She is currently an Associate Professor at the Tokyo University of Arts. Sputniko! has also been selected as a TED Fellow and gave her TED Fellow talk in TED 2019. She was also selected as one of the Young Global Leaders by the World Economic Forum and moderated sessions in Davos 2020. To date, she has had her works included in the permanent collections of museums such as the Victoria and Albert Museum (UK) and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (Japan).e it stand out
Nanohana Heels
Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011: two cities and two dates, distant in time and space, that bear testament to the devastating, long-lasting consequences of nuclear power plant accidents. When British Japanese designer Sputniko! (Hiromi Ozaki) learned that Belarusian scientists had discovered that rapeseed blossoms absorb radioactive substances from soil, she imagined flowers as an ideal partner to restore the lands torn by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. This idea developed into Nanohana Heels, in collaboration with shoe designer Masaya Kushino: leather shoes whose mechanical high heels plant rapeseeds (nanohana in Japanese) with each stepーthus turning a stroll into a light, dynamic, reparative act.
Moonwalk Machine - Selena's Step
‘It's a film about a young woman who builds a lunar rover, dreaming of a day she steps on the surface of the moon.
The piece is composed of the film, the actual lunar rover, and the photo panel.
The work was exhibited in various places such as the Pompidou, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT), Kanazawa 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art.’
Tokyo Medical University for Rejected Women
‘This is a fictional university I founded in response to the 2018 scandal in Japan, which found that many prestigious medical schools had rigged female applicants' test scores lower for years so they could maintain male dominance in the medical industry.
It's a series of photographs accompanied by a fake University brochure created by Sputniko (President) and Tomoni Nishizawa (Chancellor). Here's a view of the "Open Campus" exhibition I did in 2019’:
Red Silk of Fate
‘This is a piece that's permanently exhibited in Naoshima. It's a story about a young woman who genetically engineers her own red thread of fate (mythology very famous in East Asia, which says two people destined to meet each other romantically have an invisible red thread in between them).’
Crowbot Jenny
‘This is a film about a young solitary woman who builds a robot to communicate with her army of crows.
The piece is composed of the film, the actual robot, and the photo panel.
The work was exhibited in various places such as the MoMA NY, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT), Design Museum Holon.’
Sputniko!, The Nursery #69
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