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Biography

Throughout her career, photographer Yoko Ikeda has been finding poetry in the prosaic, and mystery in the mundane. Her photographs serve to form an imaginary world, loosely based on commonplace subjects. Working mostly in Japan, but also in Belgium, the Netherlands, the United States and elsewhere, she has created images both ominous and inviting, uncanny in their ability to coax the unexpected from the known.

In 2021 the Kawasaki Museum and Kawasaki City invited Ikeda to photograph at the empty Kawasaki Museum, which was closed after having been badly damaged on October 12, 2019, when Japan was struck by Typhoon Hagibis.

 

 

Yoko Ikeda was born in Kanazawa City, and studied at the Research Department of the Tokyo College of Photography. She now lives and works in Tokyo.

Her work has been exhibited in many one-person and group shows throughout Japan, as well as in Belgium and various venues in the United States. In 2013, she was the recipient of the prestigious Philadelphia Museum of Art Purchase Award, and her work is included in their collection. She made her New York debut at the Laurence Miller Gallery in 2016, as part of the exhibition Contemporary Photography - Asian Perspectives, coinciding with the gallery’s participation in Asia Week New York. That same year, she was awarded the Higashikawa New Photographer Award. In 2018 Ikeda was awarded the first ALPA purchase award for Best Artist at Photo Basel.