Hikari Shimoda
1 collaboration
Inspired by Japanese manga and anime from her youth, Hikari Shimoda paints modern-day issues with colourful and illustrative techniques. Her paintings often depict starry-eyed children dressed in heroic costumes resembling Superman and magical girls – an anime sub-genre of young girls who use magic. These storylines often reveal problems and struggles in contemporary society, and Shimoda does the same with her paintings through the juxtaposition of brushwork, text and collage. Shimoda sees the characters as a commentary on Christianity’s anointment of Jesus Christ as a saviour of humanity – a mirror of our fantasy heroes. "They also represent our adult desire to nurture the children of the world", she says, "and to defend the unfair world we have constructed".
