Kimiko Yoshida

Contemporary artist challenging identity through ceremonial self-erasure

Japanese-French artist Kimiko Yoshida (b.1963) creates vanishing self-portraits that deconstruct cultural stereotypes. Her Brides series features 300+ photos where she disappears into wedding costumes from 60+ cultures - a protest against her forced marriage escape in 1995.

Yoshida's Painting. Self-Portrait (2002) sold for €1.2M, becoming the most expensive photograph by a living Japanese artist. She combines Baroque painting techniques with digital manipulation to create genderless, raceless figures that question multicultural identity.

Her 2021 Quantum Shadows exhibition used AI to generate infinite variations of a single portrait, exploring non-binary existence in virtual spaces. Yoshida refuses all interviews, stating: 'My art must speak through its own disappearing acts.'