Yukiko Nishino

MFA ’16 Film/Video

Oneday, I heard the news in that an actress had a miscarriage. She says that a baby chooses which mother he or she wants before coming to a mom’s womb. On the same day, my friend gave birth. If the babies have decisions of their life before they are born, when do they decide their mothers? When do they decide whether they are born or not? To understand where babies come from, I started studying “rebirth,” which Buddihists deeply believe in. “Samsara” is the concept of rebirth and a belief of Buddhism. It also means “cyclicality of all life, matter, existence.” In Buddhism, Samsara(rebirth) is suffering. We spiritually practice to be untouched by the activities of the mind and suffering.  In this video, a man tells lessons from “Heart Sutra” translated into modern Japanese, which is a collection of Buddhism aphorisms. A woman feels distressed by what he says, and she starts practicing Yoga. Yoga liberates her soul from pain.



Yukiko Nishino is an artist who mainly focuses on female issues of personality in her video works. Nishino earned a BFA in the Filmmaking School at Osaka University of Arts (OUA) and an MFA in Film and Video at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. At OUA, she absorbed the conventional Japanese film style of the form associated with her narrative based art films and videos. She currently lives and works in Tokyo.

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