Born in Tokyo in 1994, Etsu Egami spent her formative years between Asia, the United States and Europe. Experiencing language and cultural barriers at many points in her life, she started questioning the reliability of linguistic as well as visual communication early on, a basic skepticism and curiosity that drives her artistic practice to this day. Etsu Egami’s paintings, oscillating indeterminately between figuration and abstraction, have made her one of the most celebrated young artists in Asia. 

 

The roots of her own distinctive visual language can be traced to her high school years, when she became interested in the contrast between Taishō and Shōwa period Japanese painters like Ryusei Kishida (1891-1929) who looked to Europe for inspiration, and the firmly traditionalist Nihonga artists.

 

In 2012 she moved to Beijing and studied at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), where she received her B.F.A. in 2016. The following year she moved to Germany to study media art at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design, returning to CAFA in 2019 to complete her M.F.A. and, in 2022, a doctorate followed by a post-doc position at the Wu GaunZhong Research center, Tsinghua University, Beijing.

 

Etsu Egami was shortlisted as one of Forbes Asia 30 UNDER 30 in 2020, and has exhibited in museums and galleries across Asia, including "Oriental Mystery*, HOW ART MUSEUM, Shanghai (2023); "Etsu Egami", Whitestone Gallery Singapore, Singapore (2023; "Etsu Egami: Obsession and Question, New Horizons of Modern Painting”, Hiroshima Wood One Museum (2022); “Rainbow”, Tang Contemporary Art, Seoul (2022); “You Laugh, You Lose – Etsu Egami’s eyes on modernity”, New Art Lab, Tokyo (2022); "Venus Code", A2Z PARIS (2022); “Etsu Egami: Rainbow”, Whitestone Gallery Karuizawa, Japan (2022); “Etsu Egami: In a Moment of Misunderstanding, All the Masks Fall”, Tang Contemporary Art, Beijing (2021); "Entrance gallery Vol.1 EGAMI Etsu", Chiba City Museum of Art, Chiba, Japan (2020); "UNSCHEDULED", Taikwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2020); The 2nd Beijing International Media Art Biennale “Post Life”, CAFAM, Beijing (2018); "Into the light....", β Project Space, ZKM (Center for Art and Media), Karlsruhe (2017); "God's voice, human's words?", DEHAIRI projects, Tokyo (2016).