Natsuko Uchino is an artist and professor of sculpture and ceramics at École Supérieure d’Art et de Design TALM – Le Mans. Born in Japan in 1983, she graduated from Cooper Union, New York in 2007, from the research program at the Center for Contemporary Art Kitakyushu, Japan, in 2012, and today lives in South of France. In 2007 she co-initiated Art and Agriculture on a woodland site in Upstate New York, an experimental agrarian and cultural initiative dedicated to contributive polyculture: self-sufficient diversified production and interdisciplinary residencies. Natsuko Uchino’s practice weaves together her experiences in farming and crafts, relating art to ecology, food and conviviality through the use of ceramics. This can be seen in her collaborations with Matthew Lutz-Kinoy on the Travelling Dinner Parties, conceived and staged as total artworks, from farm to table, including the tablecloth. All elements contribute to the same movement of gathering around a sensitive experience shared and ingested. Similarly, the 2016 performance Feu de joie with Maroussia Rebecq staged an outdoor kitchen of open-hearth cooking for Piacé le radieux, Bézard–Le Corbusier, a cultural association operating in a rural environment. Natsuko Uchino’s work takes the form of installations, films and performances combining the multiple materials of sculpture with functional objects and living matter. In early 2020, at Galerie Allen in Paris, the artist presented an ensemble of stoneware storage jars containing kefir and kombucha, a terracotta cooler and sets of preserves available for barter. In 2017 Natsuko Uchino was involved in the first edition of Luma Days in Arles in collaboration with IdeasCity of New Museum, New York. She was also a speaker at the symposium Autodidacts: From Van Gogh to Pirosmani organized by the Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles in September 2019.