Born in 1951 in Tsu in the prefecture of Mie, Japan, Leiko Ikemura has lived in Europe for nearly thirty years, first in Spain and later in Switzerland and Germany. Thus, she has always had to adapt to new languages and worlds and explore new surroundings. Her artistic work is marked by this investigation of various cultures. For Ikemura, painting, drawing, photography, and video are each a form of language before language. The publication i-migration takes a look at the subtle political foundation of her work based on examples of her more recent work since 2005. At the center is a cycle of watercolors, Artists Popes & Terrorists, which has been a “work in progress” since 2008. The accompanying texts are based on in-depth conversations with the artist and explore the process of crossing boundaries as a biographical and artistic phenomenon, inquiring into Ikemura’s role in contemporary art. Exhibition schedule: Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe, March 9–June 16, 2013