MYTHOLOGIES

October 23, 2025

Through the face of KIMIKO YOSHIDA

06 NOVEMBER 2025 – 17 JANUARY 2026

OPENING DAY THURSADAY 6th NOVEMBER at 8 pm.

Kourd Gallery presents the first solo exhibition in Greece of Kimiko Yoshida, titled Mythologies – Through the face of Kimiko Yoshida, curated by Eleni Varopoulou. Following the gallery’s recent collaboration with the internationally acclaimed artist at Art Athina 2025, Yoshida returns to Athens to present at Kourd Gallery a series of powerful photographic and sculptural works. The exhibition invites viewers on a journey through mythology, identity, and transformation, expressed through Kimiko Yoshida’s distinctive style and unique visual language.

Curator Eleni Varopoulou notes:
Mythical creatures from the pantheon of myths and religions, such as Medusa, Athena, Hecate, Bacchus, the Minotaur, Venus, Salome, as well as historical figures like Marie Antoinette or the Sun King, immortalised and mythologised in the past by renowned sculptors, are invoked in the contemporary self-portraits of Japanese photographer and visual artist Kimiko Yoshida. She aims to craft her own personal mythology, hybrid, semiotically rich, enigmatic, and experiential.

The artist blends her face into the colour that serves as the backdrop of the image, photographing it as though it forms part of the chromatic base. Her face is already detached, as it is first transformed into a kind of mask through the application and intervention of traditional Japanese shironuri make-up, and only then photographed. With the face placed hieratically at the centre of the frame, the artist “updates” in a singular way the European tradition of early Italian and Flemish portraiture. […] Kimiko Yoshida’s visual language originates in the notion of female performance, while moving dynamically through the realm of transformation and the strange.

Born in Tokyo, Kimiko Yoshida began her studies in literature before turning to photography. She has held solo and group exhibitions throughout Europe, America, and Asia, and currently lives and works between Venice and Paris. She was awarded the International Photography Award in the “Self-Portrait” category in 2005 and received the Prix de l’Ermitage from the Maison de la Photographie in Paris in 2015.
Her work has been published in two monographs: Tout ce qui n’est pas moi (Jean-Michel Ribettes, 2007) and Monographie Kimiko Yoshida (Actes Sud, 2010). Yoshida’s works are included in the permanent collections of major institutions such as the Maison Européenne de la Photographie and the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris), the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), The Israel Museum (Jerusalem), the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Fondation Valmont (Venice), the RuArts Foundation(Moscow), the Museo Soumaya (Mexico City), and the Power Station of Art (Shanghai), among many other museums, galleries, and private collections worldwide. Yoshida first visited Greece in 2009, participating in both the Athens Photo Festival and the Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art.

Kimiko Yoshida will take part in the exhibition PENELOPE. Her Journeys opening on May 5, 2026 in Venice at Palazzo Bonvicini, Fondation Valmont’s headquarters. Yoshida will be the protagonist of You Won’t Forget Her as well, a solo show organised by Fondation Valmont opening on June 1, 2026 at the Historical Archives–Museum of Hydra, Greece.