Moko (Motoko) Fukuyama is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist whose diverse practice spans sculpture, filmmaking, performance, drawing, photography, and installation. She immigrated to the United States from Japan in her early twenties and has pursued her version of the American Dream ever since. While living in locales ranging from Ames, IA to Memphis, TN to Boston, MA to New York City, she has closely observed nuanced versions of modern political and cultural factions in the United States. Art has become a means for her to interpret and contend with social challenges that impinge on her life, and the American way of life at large – the disappearing middle class, disappearing forests, and the contentious political spectrum, for instance. Emerging from the intersection of her Japanese and nascent American identities, her work sheds light on our collective struggles and perseverance through dialogue-driven experimental art, aiming to reconcile our contested past with our precarious future.

Fukuyama’s projects have been supported by prominent non-profit institutions, such as Recess, The Shed, SOHO20, Socrates Sculpture Park, Franconia Sculpture Park, River Valley Arts Collective, Al Held Foundation, LongHouse Reserve, Smack Mellon and The Kitchen. Her collaborators include Aki Onda, Chuck Bettis, Virginia Overton, and Yo! Vinyl Richie. Her work has been recognized with grants from  the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and Jerome Foundation. Fukuyama has held residencies at MacDowell, Stoneleaf Retreat, Art Omi, and Yaddo, which named her the recipient of the Milton and Sally Michel Avery Residency in 2018, the Philip Guston and Musa McKim Residency in 2023. From 2020 to 2022, Fukuyama participated in the Ground Floor Program at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP), where she was celebrated as their studio honoree. In 2022, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship. Fukuyama has engaged with many universities in various roles, including as a visiting artist, lecturer, panelist, and screening host, at institutions such as Kent State University, Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University, Montclair State University, New York University, School of Visual Arts (SVA) and Pratt Institute. With extensive training in filmmaking, she frequently documents renowned performance artists, including Tamar Ettun, Maja Bekan, Beau Bree Rhee, Sacha Yanow, and Aki Onda during his collaboration with Annea Lockwood and Akio Suzuki. In 2022, Fukuyama served as the cinematographer for Lorraine O'Grady's Greetings and Theses, which was screened at Brooklyn Museum, MoMA, and during Loophole of Retreat at 2022 Venice Biennale. In 2023, she traveled to Kenya to create a short film that captures Jean Shin's Sea Change, collaborating with Stanford University to explore the intersection of art, environment, and science. She is currently developing a commissioned project for The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Her latest public art work See the Forest for the Sea was commissioned by Lighthouse Works and it is on view in Fishers Island, NY through December 2024. She has recently been awarded the 2024 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship for her interdisciplinary work. In summer 2025, her new work, commissioned by Public Art Fund, will make its debut at Rockaway Beach.