ENDO Mai X MOMOSE Ayaโ
ENDO Mai (b.1984) is a Tokyo-based artist and actor whose practice spans video, photography, theater, and publishing. Known for her distinctive use of humor, she engages with a wide range of subjectsโincluding historical folktales, fan fiction, teen comics, the institution of marriage, and laws that regulate freedom of expressionโas part of her ongoing inquiry into queer feminist thought.โ
She has held numerous solo exhibitions, including Actuality on the Rooftop (Tav Gallery, Tokyo, 2023) and Attractively Idling (Tokyo Dome City, 2023). Her work has also been featured internationally in group exhibitions such as Bodies in Connection: Women Artists from Asia (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, 2024) and La Clausura del Cuerpo (Las Cigarreras Centro Cultural, Alicante, 2022).
MOMOSE Aya (b. 1988) is a Tokyo-based artist whose practice questions gender and sexuality through performance and video. From issues of gaze and desire to the discomforts that arise between oneโs own body and that of the other, she explores the complex structures of communication between oneโs own body and another presence. โ
She has held numerous solo exhibitions, including 10 Years (TALION Gallery, Tokyo, 2024) and My Open Seam (Kurume City Plaza, Fukuoka, 2023). Her work has also been shown internationally in group exhibitions such as Elle empรชche les choses de dormir (40mcube, Montpellier, 2025) and Bodies in Connection: Women Artists from Asia (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, 2024).
Love Condition
Single-channel video, color, sound, 75min 40secโ, 2020
Tokyo-based artists ENDO Mai and MOMOSE Aya have long questioned fixed ideas about gender, identity, and the body through performance. In their collaborative video work Love Condition, they challenge socially standardized conceptions of sexuality and offer alternative ways of imagining the genitals.
Seated face-to-face, the two performers knead clay while chatting about the โideal genitalia.โ As they mold and reshape the material, they envision new forms and functions of genitalia, imagining different ways bodies might relate to one another through these transformed parts. Their conversation gradually destabilizes rigid ideas about sex. Over the course of their hour-long conversation, the shape of the clay continually changes. What initially resembled a male organ gradually evolves into something else entirelyโa fluid form beyond binaries, unbound by traditional categories.
