Ueda Shiho

Ueda Shiho was born in Iwate Prefecture. After attending Atelier Canaan-no-en, a welfare facility (run by Social Welfare Corporation Canaan-no-sono) in Ninohe District, Iwate Prefecture, she began creating while working at Kita-no-kaze, a coffee shop managed by her mother. Ueda’s works are populated by numerous small characters with circles for heads and three triangles forming the body and legs. Ueda’s name for these characters is “Koyubito-san”. This evocative name sounds like the Japanese words for “dwarf,” “little finger” and “lover,” for example. With a single-minded sense of purpose, Ueda would line these characters up on the paper, with each character evoking multiple connotations.