Eri Maeda is a Japanese visual artist based in Paris. Working with ceramics, she creates stoneware sculptures in vivid, surrealist colour, turning ordinary household objects into absurd, creature-like hybrids. Her work is a sustained act of rebellion — against outdated social rules, the expectations placed on gender, and the tacit codes of conduct instilled by her upbringing in Japan.

That rebellion is informed by an unlikely source: her early training in branding and marketing. Having studied how images are built to capture attention and manipulate desire, Maeda turned those same tools against themselves. In response, she invents ‘monsters’ — mischievous, satirical figures that devour the toxic messaging of a culture that never stops telling us how to behave. Like the mythic beasts of folklore, they are at once threatening and protective: incarnations of resistance and of personal emancipation. These monsters most often erupt from the most mundane of household objects. The titles do the same work as the forms: blunt, familiar words — desire, whispers — pinned onto objects we associate with routine, comfort or indulgence. Blending dark humour with social critique, Maeda works in striking colour and glossy, high-shine finishes that are uncommon in traditional ceramics, using them to seduce the viewer before revealing, up close, more unsettling details: rows of small eyes, tongue-like protrusions, skin that pools and drips like icing or wax. Her art invites a first glance as something sweet or celebratory, and a second, closer look that turns unsettling.

Her installations habitually blur the line between the domestic and the surreal, asking us to question what feels familiar or reassuring, and using playful satire to expose the passive aggression concealed in ordinary objects and social rituals — the toaster on the counter, the dessert stand at a party, the cake brought to celebrate.

In her photographic work, Maeda stages herself in direct interaction with her sculptures, extending the dialogue between body, object and absurdity beyond the kiln. The performative gesture folds the artist back into the very hierarchy of ceramics critique: no longer only the maker of the monster, but a body implicated in the same domestic and social scripts the work sets out to unsettle. Ultimately, Maeda’s art asks us to look more closely — at the details we routinely overlook, and at the quiet poisons buried in daily life: in the objects we take for granted, in the roles we perform without questioning, and in the images that tell us, gently and constantly, how to behave.

Eri Maeda holds a BA in Art from Akita International University (2008–2012), trained in graphic and social design at the Vantan Design Institute in Tokyo (2014–2016), and studied ceramics at Shimokita Gama, also in Tokyo (2019–2020). Laureate of the Prix Merea in 2026 and of the Banko Ceramics Competition, Japan, in 2020, she has held solo exhibitions at EST Galerie, Paris (2026) and Laforet Harajuku, Tokyo (2024), shown in group exhibitions in Paris, London and Milan, and will present her work at the C14 art fair in Paris in 2026.