Haruka Sōtome

Born in Tochigi Prefecture in 1987, Sōtome completed a master’s programme in crafts within the Department of Arts and Culture at Tohoku University of Art and Design, followed by a programme at the Kanazawa Utatsuyama Craft Workshop.

She works primarily in urushi, with lips as her motif. Just as lipstick expresses individuality and beauty while protecting the lips, urushi both adorns and protects a surface. She is drawn to this dual nature, at once “beautifying” and “concealing”. Makeup can give a person emotional armour, and in the same way she uses urushi to express inner conflict and desire, creating works that explore the interplay between surface beauty and inner complexity. In 2023, her work was featured in the main visual of a television commercial for Mode Gakuen.