Slug and Moon

Born in Akita Prefecture in 1960, Tomoko Konoike is a Japanese contemporary artist. She graduated from Tokyo University of Arts in 1985. Since 1998, Konoike has produced works for modern legends through different media such as painting, sculpture, video, and installation. She has had solo shows, including those at Ohara Museum of Art (Okayama) and Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery. Konoike also participated in international art shows, including Guangzhou Triennial (China), and has established her national and international reputation.
After the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, Konoike experienced conflict in the relation between human and nature, leading to a hiatus to stop creation. In recent years she has repeated discussion and collaboration with researchers of folklore, anthropology, and archaeology, and held her solo show Primordial Violence (Kanagawa Kenmin Hall, the Museum of Modern Art, Gunma, and other museums). Today, she explores how art can be open not only to humans but to animals and nature, and continues creating works.

Slug in the title is a creature living in the environment like mountainous forests. Slug, which is said to be an evolved form of snail without shell, carries the moon instead of the shell in this work. The huge slug wearing the bright cowhide moon looks as if it had existed from the ancient period as the guardian god.