Dr Michiko Oki

Biography

Dr. Michiko Oki is an art historian and cultural researcher working in the fields of avant-garde and modernism studies, critical theory, and transcultural studies. Her interdisciplinary writings, drawn from art history, critical theory, philosophy, intuition and emotion, approach the question: What is the nature of the aesthetic experience when confronted with violent reality, and what constructive effect does the dark imagination have on the human psyche and society? Her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Art (University College London, 2014) examined the representation of the violence of normative power in contemporary biopolitics and its allegorical expressions in the art and literature of Théodore Géricault, Otto Dix, Charlotte Salomon, René Magritte, and Franz Kafka, with reference to the critical theories of T. L. Adorno, G. Agamben, W. Benjamin, J. Butler, and M. Foucault.
Her recent research revolves around a range of different themes and curiosities, all of which aim to explore a polytheistic perception as a means of transgression, challenging the violence of identity thinking and normalisation in relation to the monotheistic belief system:​
- Representations of violence and power in the form of allegory and fiction in modern and contemporary art, culture and literature
- Reconceptualisation of Surrealism through the idea of 'digital animism'
- Exploration of the polytheistic perception and its hedonistic power that persist in the forms of popular riots, carnivals and festivals as well as contemporary art/performance cultures (ex. study of 'ee ja nai ka', the peculiar carnivalesque riots that swept Japan in 1867-1868, and the subsequent cultural movement 'ero guro nansensu/erotique, grotesque, nonsense' in 1920s Japan)
- Exploration of non-Westernised art historical narratives behind the rise of avant-garde spirits of transgression in non-European countries
- Scatological imagination in the Japanese sense of humour