FR

France | Edition 2021 /

Icinori

© Icinori

Mayumi Otero (born in 1985 of a spanish father and a japanese mother) and Raphaël Urwiller (born in 1984) form the artistic duo Icinori.

Graduates of the École supérieure des arts décoratifs de Strasbourg where they met, they founded the experimental publishing house icinori in 2008. They develop their universes, working in duo or independently. Fascinated by the printed image and the engraving, nourished by popular imagery and contemporary drawing, their works are tinged with dreaminess. Together, they explore the boundaries of drawing, illustrate for the press (XXI, New-York Times, Le Tigre, Le Monde), independently produce children’s books (Issun Bôshi, Actes Sud Junior publishing) and also publish their pop-ups in silkscreen or other artists’ books (Carrière, 2019).

Icinori is also the name of the publishing house with which the two artists experiment with print art and the book object in various forms and formats (Déluge, 2017 or Carrière, 2019). These craftspeople of the image are constantly experimenting with the union between drawing, paper and color. Their work is impregnated by Japanese culture, from its greatest artists to its popular imagery. They revisit traditional tales and its imaginery, in a very graphic style.