Kimiko Yoshida is a Japanese/French artist whose art is focused on elaborate self-portraits. Born in Tokyo, she moved to France and studied at the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles and at the Studio National des Arts Contemporains in Le Fresnoy. She lives and works in Paris, Tokyo and Venice.
Yoshida moved from her homeland to escape the mortifying servitude of Japanese women, and she amplified through her art a feminist stance of protest against contemporary clichés of seduction, voluntary servitude of women, identity and the stereotypes of gender.
Her sophisticated work revolves around feminine identity and the transformative power of art: “Art is above all the experience of transformation. Transformation is, it seems to me, the ultimate value of the work. Art for me has become a space of shifting metamorphosis.”
In her project, “Painting, Self-portrait” she wears elaborate costumes and paints her skin in a monochrome color that matches the background. The monochromatic elements accentuate the fashion of Yoshida’s costumes and drown out the individuality of the artist. Each work is actually a “ceremony of disappearance“; it is not an emphasis of identity, but the opposite, an erasure of identity.
Yoshida received the International Photography Award in 2005. She has exhibited worldwide, and her work is in the permanent collections of international museums as the Fine Arts Museum of Houston, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris.
Images courtesy of Kimiko Yoshida
Discover: www.kimiko.fr
