Rui Matsunaga’s work combines a western Christian discourse with her Japanese cultural background. It is woven with animism and full of ambiguous stories.

In this talk, the artist will discuss with Dr Charlotte Mullins her philosophical interest in animism, and how the films and manga comics she grew up with strongly influenced the formation of her identity, from which she visualizes her stories and creates parallel worlds to reflect on the context of our current crisis. Matsunaga finds inspiration in Renaissance masterpieces filled with Christian mythology. She will discuss how she has interpreted them into the symbolical and mystical language with which she describes the world.

About the contributors

Rui Matsunaga
Rui Matsunaga was born in Japan. She trained at the Royal Academy of Art Schools and Central Saint Martin’s in London. Until recently Matsunaga lived and worked in the UK, but she has now returned to Japan. She has held solo exhibitions at the Atkinson (2021), the Paper Gallery in Manchester (2019) and the House of St. Barnabas in London (2016), as well as numerous group shows including the John Moores Painting Prize (2012), Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter (2016) and the Torrance Art Museum in Los Angeles (2011). Her works are in the collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, University of the Arts London, the Atkinson, Soho House in Amsterdam, the House of St. Barnabas, and the Museum of Senigallia in Italy, among others.

Dr Charlotte Mullins
Dr Charlotte Mullins is an art critic, writer and broadcaster. Her next book, A Little History of Art, will be published by Yale University Press in April 2022. Her books on contemporary figurative art, Picturing People and Painting People (featuring Rui Matsunaga), were published by Thames & Hudson in 2015 and 2006 respectively. A former editor of Art Review, V&A Magazine and Art Quarterly, Charlotte has published over a dozen books on visual art. She has written on art for the Telegraph, Financial Times and specialist titles for many years, and is a regular contributor to BBC Radio arts programmes.