Marina Kawabe’s work is concerned with the Japanese postwar aesthetic, and its subsequent effect on the country’s internal and external cultural image. Through the creation of her works, Kawabe nurtures the exploited female figure often depicted in Japanese popular culture; a process that is facilitated by the clay medium. Kawabe’s handbuilt ceramic sculptures stylistically engage with the anime style, translating flat cartoon imagery into three-dimensional forms. In appropriating the kitschy “Kawaii” aesthetic, Kawabe uses humour to commemorate the grief of living as a Japanese woman in a world of fetishisation and cyber-Orientalism. 

Graduating from National Art School in 2024, Marina Kawabe was awarded the Gallery Lane Cove Residency and Exhibition Prize. She has since exhibited her works at CBD Gallery, as well as multiple group shows around Sydney.