ARTIST

MOMOKO YOSHIDA

Born in Hyogo in 1989, currently based in Chiba, Japan.
She completed her M.F.A. in Painting at Kyoto City University of Arts.
Her work begins with a sensation that, as she imagines a parallel world projecting desire and fetishism, her own physical presence gradually becomes tenuous—eventually disappearing.
Inspired by contemporary youth culture, she paints portraits of young people that often reveal the ambiguous and fluid presence drifting between nationality and gender, the real and virtual, the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional.
Recent solo exhibitions include (30p) Water soup (ARTDYNE, Tokyo, 2024) and hemi hemi・Typin’, Set 4 “Waiting on your car.” (Ritsuki Fujisaki Gallery, Tokyo, 2024).
Selected group exhibitions include Study: Osaka Kansai International Art Festival 2025 (Semba Excel Building, Osaka), and ATAMI ART GRANT 2024 (Atami City, Shizuoka).

Artist Statement
I imagine a world that resembles a parallel reality, and paint scenes where nostalgia for the past intersects with curiosity about the future.
What appears in these scenes, in tandem with the disappearance of the self, are figures of young people onto whom I project my own admiration, desires, and fetishes—manifested in a different world.
These characters, depicted as unknown symbols that contain the future, are sometimes freed from fixed identity—transcending nationality, gender, reality and virtuality, the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional.
I am interested in idealized memories of the past and multi-layered worldviews. Through painting, I explore narrative structures that deepen in a nested form and attempt to reinterpret my own life as a new kind of fiction.
My creative process begins with building 3D models of characters and backgrounds based on images. I film them, extract still frames, and use these as drafts for my paintings.
This multi-step transformation is, for me, a method of intentionally distancing from the real world, and delving into the depths of the imaginary to explore my own self.
Although my work draws inspiration from youth culture—such as music, fashion, games, and internet culture—I also aim to evoke themes connected to the expansion of identity and spirituality in the age of information.
As social media and the metaverse free people from the constraints of the real world and open up new forms of self-expression, our existence is becoming increasingly complex.
Within this context, I see my work as a form of “contemporary portraiture,” offering a new sense of reality.

https://momokoyoshida.com/