Artist
Shiro Masuyama
Artist
Artist Bio
Shiro Masuyama is originally from Tokyo where he studied architecture to Masters level in Meiji University, Japan. Following international residencies at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin and Flax Art Studios, he moved to Belfast, Northern Ireland, where he’s been based ever since. Using his architectural background and Japanese identity, he makes projects which fundamentally connect people and society: so-called socially engaged art.
As an artist from Japan who has made their home in Northern Ireland, he’s in a unique position to question how identity can be influenced by the dominant political forces surrounding us.
Artwork Description
The work is made with a local motorcycle group in Belfast as part of my ongoing Identity T-Shirts Project. When I see T-shirts with text in the shops, I always find it hard to find T-shirts that express my identity. In my project, we make T-shirts with text that represents the unique identity of all participants, before taking a group photograph together.
Apart from the fact the image of the outcome will represent a group of people whose identity is straight, white and male, the texts of the T-Shirts on the final image will also represent the identity of each participant individually.
