Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs, it’s time to talk about an artist who shatters our certainties about contemporary art with the consistency of a viscous substance. Kotao Tomozawa, born in 1999 in Bordeaux, embodies the fascinating paradox of an artist who transforms discomfort into the sublime, suffocation into liberation.
You think you know contemporary art? Let me tell you how this young Franco-Japanese woman, armed with slime and visceral sensitivity, redefines our relationship with self-portraiture. In her monumental canvases, where faces dissolve under layers of translucent material, Tomozawa doesn’t just paint—she captures the very essence of our anxiety-ridden era, where authenticity drowns in a sea of artificial images.
At first glance, her works may seem like mere aesthetic play: hyperrealistic portraits submerged in a captivating gelatinous substance. But don’t be fooled. Each painting is a dizzying dive into what Roland Barthes called the “punctum”—the poignant detail that pierces the viewer. Here, however, the punctum isn’t a detail; it’s the very substance invading the canvas, a liquid metaphor for our troubled relationship with identity.
Take her recent work “Slime CXCⅦ” (2024), where the artist depicts herself in a state between torment and ecstasy. This piece recalls Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”, where bodies transform under divine forces. But for Tomozawa, the transformation isn’t divine punishment—it’s a voluntary act of erasure and rebirth. The artist recounts how, exhausted by social media and its incessant flood of images, she spontaneously covered herself in slime one day. This seemingly absurd gesture became the foundation of her artistic practice.
This approach echoes Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s thoughts on the phenomenology of perception. In “Eye and Mind”, the philosopher writes: “It is by lending his body to the world that the painter changes the world into painting”. Tomozawa takes this idea literally: she physically lends her body to the slime experience, transforming the physical sensation of suffocation into pictorial liberation. Her canvases don’t just depict a person covered in viscous matter—they embody the precise moment when being dissolves into pure sensation.
Another hallmark of her work is the recurring use of her childhood doll, Ruki-chan. This figure, appearing in numerous works such as “Slime XCIX” (2021), isn’t merely a nostalgic accessory. It functions as what Walter Benjamin called a “dialectical image”—an object concentrating past and present, personal and universal. By covering Ruki-chan in slime, Tomozawa doesn’t just revisit her childhood; she explores the boundaries between animate and inanimate, familiar and strange, evoking Freud’s concept of the “uncanny”.
Superficial critics will say her work is just a variation on the theme of fluid identity, so beloved by our era. But that misses the point. What Tomozawa stages is not so much the fluidity of identity as the physical experience of the disappearance and resurgence of the self. When she describes the moment she first covered herself in slime—unable to breathe, feeling time dissolve—she touches something deeper than mere artistic performance.
Her journey is as fascinating as her works. She graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts in 2024 after receiving the Kume Prize in 2019 and the Ueno Geiyu Prize in 2021. Her solo exhibitions have been happening at a breakneck pace, from Tokyo to Hong Kong, each marking an evolution in her practice. Her latest exhibition, “Reflection”, presented at N&A Art SITE, represents a significant turning point in her use of natural light, introducing aquatic motifs that seem to dance on her dolls’ faces.
What makes her work particularly relevant today is her ability to transform collective anxiety into an aesthetic experience. In a world saturated with digital images and Instagram filters, where anyone can alter their appearance with a single click, Tomozawa chooses a radically physical approach. She imposes a limit experience—covering herself in slime to the point of suffocation—to create works that speak of authenticity through its apparent negation.
The technique she employs is as remarkable as her concept. Her oil paintings demonstrate exceptional mastery of textures and translucency. Each canvas is a technical tour de force where the pictorial material itself seems alive, in constant motion. The reflections she captures aren’t mere decorative effects—they create a permanent tension between surface and depth, presence and absence.
Her collaboration with her mother, Mimiyo Tomozawa, within the duo “Tororoen”, adds another dimension to her work. This mother-daughter artistic relationship evokes what Julia Kristeva theorizes in “Powers of Horror” about the abject and the maternal. Kotao’s works can be seen as a complex negotiation with maternal heritage, where slime becomes a medium for both connection and separation.
Her recent works, inspired by travels in India and Thailand, introduce a new chromatic palette influenced by natural light. This evolution shows an artist who, far from resting on a winning formula, continues to explore and push the boundaries of her practice.
Tomozawa represents a new generation of artists who don’t just comment on our era but physically embody it in their practice. Her works aren’t windows onto the world but sensory experiences confronting us with our own limits. In a world where digital art and meaningless NFTs threaten to completely dematerialize artistic experience, her work reminds us of the crucial importance of the body and physical sensation.
Her meteoric success—her works sell instantly upon presentation—might raise concerns about excessive commercialization. But Tomozawa maintains remarkable artistic integrity, continuing to experiment and take risks. Each new exhibition reveals an artist deepening her research rather than simply meeting market expectations.
Kotao Tomozawa isn’t just an artist who paints portraits or her doll with slime—she’s a creator redefining our understanding of what a self-portrait can be in the digital age. Her work reminds us that in an increasingly virtual world, physical experience and bodily sensation remain irreplaceable sources of artistic truth.