Ebisu (29/40)

Ebisu — one of the Seven Lucky Gods of Japanese popular religion, the deity of fishermen, commerce, and good fortune, typically depicted as a rotund, cheerful figure holding a fish and a fishing rod — here rendered through Mayumi Oda's feminist iconographic lens. Oda's engagement with traditional Japanese popular religion — the Seven Lucky Gods, the takarabune, the auspicious symbols of fortune and prosperity — transforms these largely male-figured popular traditions through her characteristic feminine and feminist revision. Ebisu in Oda's hands might become female, might be accompanied by the goddess figures that populate her other compositions, might have his commercial and fishing associations inflected by her ecological concerns.