BIOGRAPHICAL CATALOG OF THE MODEM'S COVERS AUTHORS

69 Modem Europe Spring-Summer 2012 Cover by KIMIKO YOSHIDA 2011 ARTIST / PHOTOGRAPHER 69 Kimiko Yoshida , Japanese artist. She was born in Tokyo in 1963. She studied photography in Japan and then in France, where she has lived and worked since 1995. Since she fled her homeland to escape the mortifying servitude and humiliating fate of Japanese women, Kimiko Yoshida a - through what is called “self-portraits” - has refined and amplified a feminist stance of protest, cultivated and distanced from “current affairs”: against contemporary clichés of seduction, against volun- tary servitude of women, against “identity” defined by appurtenances and “com- munities”, against the stereotypes of “gender” and the determinism of heredity. In her photographs, videos and installations, her face painted and disguised, is on the verge of disappearance. The artist has created, to the aesthetics of Japanese author Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows, an insight into her inner fantasy. Her quest to hybridise cultures and to transform the being, to metamorphose the state of things have lead her to multiple metaphors in mental universes, conducive to a systematic personal deconstruction. “Everybody is trying to be unique,” she says, “I want to be plural, I want to become universal.” In 2005 she won 1st prize at the International Photography Awards in New York . These works have become part of collections at various museums and international art centres.