This spotlight series celebrates the 28 artists featured in New Worlds: Women to Watch 2024 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts from April 14-August 11, 2024. The series was compiled by Susan R. Cohen, current trustee of the Massachusetts Committee of NMWA and former longstanding director of the Council for the Arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Cohen received her BA in Art History from Richmond and the American International University in London.

What is your vision of a new world? Twenty-eight artists from around the globe are answering this query, revealing through their work what each hopes, thinks, and worries over for the days ahead. Some work confronts the climate crisis as the world burns and floods and wildlife dwindles. Some presents Indigenous voices speaking clear and strong about their place in the world – decrying what has been lost through ignorance and violence and what they have cherished and kept alive for future generations. The woman’s body is here as well, proudly challenging what history and media has circulated about her form. Science, geography, and genetics share space with reimagined reflections of materiality, femininity, and community.

Meet Migiwa Orimo, representing Ohio

An interdisciplinary artist, Migiwa Orimo primarily works in installation consisting of text, drawing, objects, video and sound that explores the notions of gap, slippage, and “a realm of disjunction.” Using the concept of storage/archive as her framework, Orimo explores the relationship between public memory and private space by examining: how memories are shared and internalized; how they are stored and become stories; and, how memories and history collide.

A five-time recipient of the Ohio Arts Council Individual Artists Fellowship/Individual Creativity Excellence Award for her interdisciplinary art projects, she was awarded residencies at the Headlands Art Center in 2012 and SPACES Gallery’s SPACES World Artist Project in 2014. Her work has been shown extensively, including at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC; San Bernardino Art Museum, CA; and in Ohio, the Springfield Art Museum, Dayton Art Institute, OSU’s Urban Arts Space, Riffe Gallery (Columbus), Oberlin College’s Baron Gallery, and Weston Art Gallery (Cincinnati), UNC-Chapel Hill’s Allcott Gallery (NC), apexart (NYC).

As a social justice activist, Orimo facilitates People’s Banner Workshop and provides free banners to activist groups.

Orimo was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. After receiving her degree in literature and studying graphic design in Japan, she immigrated to the US in the 1980’s. Orimo lives and works in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

Photograph courtesy of the artist. Please click on the image to visit the artist’s website.




Signal (Morse Code), 2019. Medium: Embroidery floss on linen, a desk, and a book. Dimensions: variable, roughly 5’x15’x7’. *The image is from “Slippage: 6 Fault Lines” an exhibit by Migiwa Orimo at Ripon College, 2020.
courtesy of the artist




Signal (Morse Code), detail, 2019. Photo: courtesy of the artist

Signal (Morse Code), detail, 2019. Photo: courtesy of the artist

Watch more:

Artist Talk with Migiwa Orimo – A New World: Ohio Women to Watch 2023

Elongated Shadows Artist Interview- Migiwa Orimo