Michelle Zacharias: Born in Canada but currently resides in Japan.

ザカライアス、ミッシェル: カナダ生まれ、日本に住んでいる.

ミッシェル・ザカライアスは日本に20年以上住んでいるカナダ人アーティスト。今日本のアーティストかカナダのアーティスト？　いつでも、どこでも、新人の感じをして、中からじゃなくて外から見られる気がする。主にダストや色鉛筆を使って制作活動を行っており、二年前京都芸術祭で国際芸術賞を受賞した。複雑な色使いと混沌とした作風が保守的だとか、芸術的すぎるとの批評家のコメントも理解しているが、彼女にとって芸術とは、商業的でも概念的でもなく、自分自身が楽しんで取り組むものなのだ。

As a visual artist, Michelle Zacharias always seem to be on the outside looking in. Is she now a Canadian artist or a Japanese artist? She works primarily in natural pigments such as dust, coloured pencil, photography, and mixed media. Recent work shows the anthropocene and how dust is everywhere but affected in content and colour by individual environments. Why dust? Living and working in the shadow of a large chemical plant combined with winds bringing in “yellow dust” with attached particles of industrial pollution from China for many years resulted in allergies plaguing the artist throughout the year. Pollen from nature’s flower and trees becomes an issue when covered in pollutants, and her artwork shows how that natural beauty might be sprinkled with spots of darkness that are partly natural and partly manmade. Dust might sound unappealing and ugly, but beautiful sunsets result from dust in the air. This dust becomes a natural pigment when traditional Japanese paint-making techniques are used. Black ink or coloured pencil can either spotlight or imitate the dust in artwork. In contemporary art, dust has been sprinkled in other mediums but rarely has it been as featured before Zacharias’s art. Zacharias continues to explore how dust can be both used as a medium or suggested when using other mediums. Too conservative for the artsies and too artsy for the conservatives.