“To be there where I think I am not, to disappear where I think I am, that is what matters.”
Like her fellow Japanese self-costuming photographic artists Yasumasa Morimura and Tomoko Sawada, Kimiko Yoshida’s work shows that art is about transformation and photography, in particular, is a medium of performance. Because her bodily decoration and physiognomy are so motley and elastic she would be beyond recognition in her hundreds of self-portraits, were it not for their uniformly square, front-angle head-and-shoulders format. But then, ‘self-portrait’ isn’t really the right term; these are not images of herself but of costumes; fantasy selves have swallowed her up completely.
From noh and kabuki theatre to the modern cosplay phenomena, masks and bodily disguise have long held a special place in Japanese culture. They provide anonymity, a dividing barrier, liberation from earthly ties and a means to overcome fear – fear of the unknown and fear of death – by making the wearer the thing feared. According to the artist, her work exists as a feminist stance “against contemporary cliches of seduction, against voluntary servitude of women, against ‘identity’ defined by appurtenances and ‘communities’, against the stereotypes of ‘gender’ and the determinism of heredity.”
