Etsuko Miura

Etsuko Miura (born December 5, 1968-, Toyko, Japan) is a doll artist. She creates dolls, mainly spherical-jointed dolls made of stone clay, as well as objects made of medical equipment, scrap wood, and other materials. She is unique among spherical-jointed doll artists in that she creates dolls with a motif of body modification, such as dolls with wounds or dolls integrated with musical instruments or machines. The girls in Miura's works are all wounded or have become imperfect for some reason (or of their own volition), and the way they proudly display their painful appearance is at once eerie and endearing. They are convinced that they are beautiful because they have scars, bruises, stitches, and other defects on their bodies, and they convey the superiority of having a perfect body because of imperfection, and how self-love, which is different from refraction, is paradoxically reduced to kindness toward others through the acquisition of self-affirmation. She has held numerous solo and group exhibitions since 2000.