About the artist
Born in Tokyo in 1939, Gozo Yoshimasu is one of Japan’s preeminent contemporary artists. Active since the 1960s, the avant-garde poet and multimedia artist seeks to recover and reinvent the shared roots between poetry and performance. Often incorporating diverse languages and literary references that he picks up on his travels around the world and in his correspondences with other writers, Yoshimasu’s poems turn the Japanese language into a machine for generating new meaning, as reflected in the collage-like appearance of his manuscripts. He has also created his own video practice, gozoCiné, combining video with spontaneous poetic composition and readings.

In 2016, Yoshimasu was the subject of a retrospective solo exhibition at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, “The Voice Between: The Art and Poetry of Yoshimasu Gozo.” In 2017 and 2018, his solo show “HATENOUTAGOE” traveled from the Ashikaga Museum of Art, Tochigi, to the Okinawa Prefectural Museum & Art Museum, Naha, and the Shoto Museum of Art, Tokyo. Group exhibitions include the Manchester International Festival (2021); 21st Bienal de São Paulo (1991); the presentation of “Yoshimasu Gozo: Fire Embroidery—Beyond Ishikari Sheets” at Sapporo International Art Festival (2017); “Sharjapan,” Sharjah Art Foundation (2018); Reborn-Art Festival 2019, Ayukawa, Miyagi Prefecture (2019); and the MOT Annual, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2019). Publications include Departure (1964), Anthology of Golden Age Poetry (1970), Osiris, God of Stone (1984), At the Entrance to the House of Fireworks (1995), “The Island of Snow” or “The Ghost of Emily” (1998), and Dear Monster (2016). Awards include the Purple Ribbon (2003) and the Japan Art Academy Prize by the Japan Art Academy (2015).