Yasumasa Morimura is a conceptual artist whose work encompasses photography, film and live performance. For more than three decades, he has developed a practice which uses self-portraiture and appropriation as a tool to subvert art history, popular culture, and the media. Through costumes, props, makeup and digital manipulation, Morimura masterfully transforms himself into recognisable subjects from the Western cultural canon. In doing so, he deconstructs the notion of the ‘icon’ and ‘masterpiece’ to examine the male-gaze, the fluidity of gender and the constructed nature of identity.
Morimura graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Kyoto City University of Art in 1978. He has held solo international exhibitions at Kyoto City Kyocera Museum of Art, 2022; Artizon Museum, Tokyo, 2021; Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, 2020; Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, 2017; and the National Museum of Modern Art, Osaka, 2016.
