The Infinity of the Ultra-Girls

I happened upon one of the more surprising turns in my collecting journey during the Ground Zero Japan exhibition curated by Noi Sawaragi, which ran from November 1999 to January 2000. At the time, I was an emerging collector and had initially visited the show to see further works from Makoto Aida’s War Picture Returns series, having already acquired A Picture of an Air-Raid on New York and Beautiful Flag from the series. However, I soon found myself captivated by much more than I’d anticipated.

The exhibition was a sensory overload. Shinro Ohtake’s massive installation, rattled noisily, commanding space, while Motohiko Odani’s illusionary wood sculpture fascinated me so much that I requested to purchase it. Yet, the most astonishing encounter was with the work of a young artist Yayoi Deki, who was only 20 years old at the time. Her enormous paintings—created through a distinctive, monomaniac technique of finger stamping—were staggering in detail and scale. They exuded a playful “girlishness” on the surface but contained an underlying sense of foreboding. I later learned that Makoto Aida, whose works were exhibited next to hers, had remarked, “How envious that she can draw without any worries.”

In August 2024, a large exhibition showcasing my collection of 234 works by 115 groups was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. The show, full of a new kind of energy, was lined with works by Shoko Maemoto, Yayoi Deki, Nana Tamamoto, Erina Matsui, and Aki Kondo. I wanted to stay there forever. If I were to name the sensation, I would call it “ultra-girlishness.”

The term ultra-girl dates back to the book Cho-shojo e (Toward the Ultra-Girl) (1984) by artist Chizuru Miyasako. She describes this feminine principle as “perceiving the concept of time, not as the Western linear time that flows one-way from Paradise Lost to the Last Judgment, but as an Asian circular time, i.e., a circulation in which a year flows toward the last ring of the New Year’s Eve bells and restarts at point zero on New Year’s Day.”

Beneath the surface of Deki’s recent works—the relentless smiling faces and the eternal repetition—lies something deeper. It seems as though there is a compulsion to fill every inch of the canvas with brightness—an unending pursuit of happiness. The transcendent infinity may represent a roar of laughter, mocking the linear struggles for happiness we face today.

Yayoi Deki’s Flags series initially began with the innocent observation that national flags are “beautiful,” then eventually evolved into a series of Minority Flags—symbols of pride for gender, racial, and social justice. A reflection of Deki’s ability to juxtapose people, objects, and concepts seamlessly, the series feels intuitive rather than deliberate.

Perhaps it’s easier to think of Deki’s art as an endless game—an ultra-girl at play to extraordinary extremes. Just as the graffiti in town created by boys has become street art, perhaps the indoor play by girls is now becoming art in its own right.