Natsuko Tanihara / 谷原 菜摘子

Born in 1989, in Saitama Prefecture, Japan.
Lives and works in the Kansai area.

Natsuko Tanihara's work connects with folklore and myths from around the world, depicting themes of human violence, fear, malice, and war through her unique mythology. She depicts, “the beauty in the confluence of negative personal memories and the darkness of humanity.” Tanihara’s fundamental mediums are oil and acrylic paint, but she also uses glitter, sequin and metal powders and black and red velvet as her support. She has engaged with traditional Japanese performing arts, notably through her work with Bunraku puppet theatre. In 2024 and 2025, she was commissioned to create stage paintings for the Nakanoshima Bunraku showcase in Osaka, an annual event.

Education
Natsuko Tanihara graduated with a major in Oil Painting from the Graduate School of Fine Arts at the Kyoto City University of Arts in 2016 where she received her Doctorate in 2021 with her dissertation titled "Light Pulses at the Bottom of Darkness—Explorations of Dark Paintings Starting from Derori." She wrote a thesis aligning her work with the lineage of "dark paintings" from medieval Japan. From the fall of 2017 to the fall of 2018, she had spent one year abroad in Paris on a research grant from the Gotoh Memorial Culture Foundation, a division of the Tokyu Foundation.

Awards and prizes
2024
Sakuya-Konohana award
2017
Gotoh Memorial Culture Newcomer Award
2016
VOCA Shoreisho (second place prize).
2015
7th Koji Kinutani Award and the Kyoto City Museum of Art Award.

Selected Solo Exhibitions
2025
"Multiply Encoded Messages", MEM, Tokyo

2024
"Somewhere a Trumpet Sounds", Ueno Royal Museum Gallery, Tokyo
"Our Lives", MEM, Tokyo

2023
Creative Center Osaka, to celebrate her receipt of the Sakuya-Konohana award
ARKO2023, (Artist in Residence Kurashiki, Ohara), Ohara Museum of Art, Kurashiki, Japan

Selected Group Exhibition
2025
"Love Suicide”, Artweek Tokyo 2025 "Flashes of Creation and Destruction", Gyre, Shibuya-ku - Tokyo
"Collection 1: Portraits Of Her", National Museum of Art, Osaka

2022
“Behold, This Beautiful World”, MEM, Shibuya-ku,Tokyo

2021
“An Artist of the Floating World”, Ueno Royal Museum Gallery, Tokyo
“A Castle on the Paper”, MEM, Tokyo

2019 “Matsurowanu-Mono”, MEM, Tokyo
"Here/Hereafter: Visionaries 2", MEM, Tokyo

2018
"Musubi", Galerie Da-End, Paris, France