Yoshiko Shimada

Yoshiko Shimada (嶋田 美子, Shimada Yoshiko, born 1959) is a Japanesevideo artist and performance artistwho has been called "Japan’s premier feminist and antiwar artist."

Shimada was born and raised in the Tachikawa section of western Tokyo, which, as the site of a US air force base, gave her early exposure to US-Japan postwar tensions during the 1960s. She graduated with a BA in Humanities from Scripps College in 1982 and received a PhD from Kingston University, London, in 2015. She was also lecturer at Gakushuin University (2000) and Keio University (2002,2004)

Among the themes she explores are cultural memory and the role of women in World War 2 as both aggressors and victims. Her 1992 etching Shooting Lesson, for example, juxtaposes portraits of four Korean comfort women with a photograph of the wives of Japanese military police stationed in Korea receiving shooting lessons for self-protection against the local population. In her 1993 installation Tied to Apron Strings, she uses white aprons as both a symbol of domesticity and motherhood and as a reminder of the uniform of the Dai Nippon Fujinkai, a women's patriotic organization of World War 2 Japan. Shimada's interactive installation Bones in Tansu: Family Secrets, in which she solicited the war memories of museum visitors and incorporated them into the exhibit, first appeared in Tokyo in 2004 and then in seven other locations around the world. She performed Becoming a Statue of a Japanese Comfort Woman outside the Japanese embassy in London in 2012.

Shimada's works are held by the New York Public Library, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Keio University Art Center, Kyoto Seika University, and City University of New York. She has had solo exhibitions in Japan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Canada, and the United States, and her work was included in the 2002 Gwangju Biennale in South Korea. Shimada curated the Bigakkō portion of the Anti-Academy exhibit at the John Hansard Gallery in 2013-14.

Shimada has been included in the Asian American Arts Centre's digital archive.

Selected Group Exhibitions[15]

• Felt Experience (2007), Catalyst Arts, Belfast, Northern, Ireland
• Conceal/Confess (2007), Chiang mai University Art Museum, Thailand
• Doll House (2007), Shanghai Xuhui Art Museum, Shanghai
• Sex Arbeit (2006) NGBK Shanghai
• Mapping the Body (2006), NRLA Festival, Tramway, Glasgow
• Fantastic Asia (2005), Songkuk Museum, Seoul
• Life, actually (2005), Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo
• Borderline Cases (2004), A.R.T. gallery, Toronto
• Trans-Okinawa (2003), Highway, Los Angeles
• City-net Asia (2003), Seoul City of art Museum, Seoul
• Seoul-Asia Art Now (2003), Maronier Art Centre, Seoul, Korea
• Attitude (2002), Kumatoto Cisty Museum of Contemporary Art, Kumamoto
• Empathy (2002), Fujikawa Gallery, Osaka
• East Asian Women and Herstories, Seoul Women's Center, Seoul, Korea
• There, Gwangju Biennale project 2,Gwangju, Korea
• Spirits (2001), workshops and theatre performance with Theatreworks, Singapore
• Sex and Consumerism (2001), Brighton University, Aberythowyth Art Centre, Wales and other venues in the UK
• Yume no Ato (2000), Haus am Waldsee Berlin, Kunsthalle Baden-Baden
• Dark Mirrors from Japan (2000), De Appel Foundation, Amsterdam
• Windows-inside, outside (1999), Gwanju City Art Museum, Gwangju, Korea
• Flexible Co-existence (1997), Art Tower Mito, Mito
• Lord of the Rim-in herself, for herself (1997), Hsing-chong Culture Centre, Taiwan
• Gender, beyond memories (1996), Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo
• Age of Anxiety (1995), Powerplant, Toronto,Canada

Selected Solo Exhibition:[15]

• "Being a Japanese Comfort Woman" street performance (2012), London/Tokyo
• Bones in Tansu - Family Secrets (2007) - Travelling Exhibition: University of Philippines (Manila), Chiang Mai University Art Museum (Chiang Mai, Thailand), Cemeti Art House(Yogkyakarta, Indonesia), and Galleri Christina Wilson, Copenhagen.
• Escape from 'Oneself' (2001), Centre A, Vancouver, Canada
• Kyoto Seika University Gallery (2000), Kyoto
• Asia/Pacific Studies Institute, New York, University, New York
• A Space Gallery (1997), Toronto
• John Batten Gallery (1997), Hong Kong
• Hiraya Gallery (1997), Manila
• Keio University Art Centre (1996), Tokyo
• Ota Fine Arts (1996, 1998, 2002), Tokyo

• Yoshiko Shimada (1996) - Yoshiko Shimada, Research Centre for the Arts and Arts Administration, Keio University (Tokyo, Japan)https://www.librarycat.org/lib/Centre_A/item/156082270
• Divide and Rule: Yoshiko Shimada (1997) - Yoshiko Shimada, Catherine Osborne, Meg Taylor. A Space Gallery (Toronto, ON) ISBN 0969506872
• Yoshiko Shimada; Art Activism 1992-98 (1998) - Yoshiko Shimada. OTA Fine Arts (Tokyo, Japan)
• Twilight Sleep: Momoyo Torimitsu, Noboru Tsubaki, Ryoko Aoki Zon Ito, Ken Ikeda, Kyupi Kyupi, Hiroshi Ono, Yoshiko Shimada (2000) - Istituto Giaponese di Cultura (Rome, Italy)
• Escape from 'OneSelf' (2002), OTA Fine Arts (Tokyo, Japan)