Eiko Soga

Eiko Soga is an artist and a researcher currently reading for her doctoral degree in Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Art and St. John’s College, University of Oxford.

For her doctoral project, she is working with the idea of ‘making’ as a mode of ethnographic research, through documentation, activation, and learning and thinking-through-practicing. Her research uses storytelling as a way to observe and document how minor, ephemeral, and sensory aspects of everyday processes can lead to bigger phenomena such as collectiveness and the development of culture. She works with objects that are considered ‘traditional’ to unpack the value systems that inform our lives. This analysis encompasses a range of notions including slow process, labour, politics, ecology, empathy, companionship, and conversation while documenting temporal frictions between indigenous knowledge and contemporary society.

She is a graduate of MFA Sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art and MSs Japanese Studies at University of Oxford where she studied Sociology, Anthropology, and Modern Literature. Since graduating from the Slade, she has been working on site specific research based projects with both Ainu and Japanese people in Hokkaido, Japan.  She works with various media such as video, poetry, installation, and sculpture.

College: St. John's College

Department: Ruskin School of Art

Supervisors: Dr. Corin Sworn and Professor Sho Konishi 

Previous Degree Programme: MSc in Japanese Studies 2017/2018