Yuki Onodera was born in Tokyo in 1962 and has been living and working in Paris since 1993. Upon winning a photography prize early in her career, her work was commended for its “enigmatic value,” and she has since received significant international praise for her unreal and multilayered images. Moreover, as there were fewer artists at that time working with photographic expression within the contemporary art field in Japan than there are today, Y. Onodera’s presence was a pioneering one. I spoke with Y. Onodera, who had returned to Japan for a solo exhibition in Tokyo, about her evolution, details of her process, the physicality expressed in her work, and her minority status.
Interview Date: 4 December 2024

Natsuko Fukushima: After teaching yourself photography and winning the Canon New Cosmos of Photography grand prize in 1991, you moved your base of operations to Paris. Why did you choose Paris, and why have you continued to maintain a base there to this day?

Yuki Onodera: Well, first of all, I felt as if I had to go and work outside of Japan. And I thought that, rather than America—where commercialism is strong—Europe, which embraces diversity, and in particular Paris, which is a cultural and geographic crossroads, would be best. It’s a somewhat different situation now, but at the time, a lot of young people, including my friends, were trying to go abroad to gain experience, so it was natural for me to want to travel.

N. Fukushima: Was the situation around photography also different between Japan and Europe?

Y. Onodera: It was totally different. Around ’93 in Japan, the photography world and the art world were separate, and there weren’t very many artists who straddled that divide. When I moved to France, I naturally found many artists who did.

Yuki Onodera, Portrait of Second-hand Clothes No.13, 1994, gelatin silver print, 115 x 115 cm, Courtesy of the artist

Yuki Onodera, Portrait of Second-hand Clothes no.1, 1994, gelatin silver print on fiber base paper, 115 × 115 cm, Courtesy of the artist

N. Fukushima: One of your most important works is 1994’s Portrait of Second-hand Clothes (Furugi no pōtorēto). With this work, you brought home and photographed second-hand clothing that had been displayed in a Christian Boltanski (1944–2021) exhibition.

Y. Onodera: Having made constructed photography pieces, I wanted to create works that came closer to humanity. And then Boltanski’s exhibition was taking place right when I had decided to use to second-hand clothes. It was alright to pack up the clothing that had been on display there and take it home, so I decided to photograph it. In his work, huge piles of second-hand clothes were accumulated, underscoring the magnitude of tragedy, but I elected to spread them out one by one and photograph them individually. In contrast with such a grand history, I felt like I wanted to tackle the tiny history of the individual.

N. Fukushima: I understand that the photographs were taken by the window of the Montmartre house you lived in; the unique feeling of suspension that the clothes have certainly carries a mysterious air.

Y. Onodera: I didn’t want to photograph these clothes as objects, as if they were things that had been placed on a bed. When I hung the clothes up on wires, with the sky for backdrop, they felt as if they were independent. And rather than a double exposure, I waited—as if I was fishing—for the just the right appearance of cloud and sky, only releasing the shutter at the critical moment. I was finicky about how the clothes were placed on the wires, about how the shoulders and hems were shaped. I didn’t notice it at the time, but what I wanted to do was photograph the invisible physicality within—the body that had evaporated—rather than the clothes themselves. It wasn’t until ten years later that I realized my obsession with physicality had continued on from that time.

Yuki Onodera, Muybridge’s Twist No. 25, 2023, gelatin silver print, pastel, crayon, charcoal, collage on canvas, 308 x 208 cm, Courtesy of the artist

N. Fukushima: Is your interest in physicality related to your experience of studying fashion design? After all, a fashion photography–like composition is visible in Muybridge’s Twist (2014–present).

Y. Onodera: No, not really. As I was studying, I began to think that fashion wasn’t the thing that I wanted to do. Instead, I was influenced by the dance and films of the ’80s and ’90s made by William Forsythe (b. 1949) and Pina Bausch (1940–2009). In these films, I paid close attention to the protagonists’ movements. With Muybridge’s Twist, I wanted to create, through the collaging of photographs, a single still image out of a continuity of choreographies. I got the idea from Eadweard Muybridge (1830–1904)’s sequential photographs, which captured the successive movements of animals and people with a camera. Later, an extravagant exhibition that was staged at the Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, In Pursuit of “Movement” (“Ugoki” o motomeru), showcased my work alongside that of Muybridge and [Auguste] Rodin (1840–1917).

N. Fukushima: How do you think of your own physicality when you’re working? You’ve commented before that because photography imposes a complex, intellectual process through the camera, you don’t imbue a canvas with your own physicality or emotion as one does in painting.

Installation view: Parcours-Between Pneumatic Post and Homing Pigeon, Waitingroom, Tokyo, November 2–December 8, 2024

Y. Onodera: Yes, I think creating photographs features many obstacles but, at the same time, these are fascinating.. As you say, my own physicality isn’t directly reflected in my work, but, nonetheless, I still aim for my physicality and my work to form a kind of circuit. And the material the works possess, their materiality, is also important. Recently, with the popularization of digital cameras and smartphones, it’s become common to “see images on a screen.” Inkjet printing has gone mainstream, too, but that doesn’t sit right with me. With my current Tokyo exhibition, Parcours: Between Pneumatic Post and Homing Pigeon (Parcours: Kūki yūbin to denshobato no aida), I’m conducting new experiments, doing things like cutting up photographs and affixing the clothing used in Portrait of Second-hand Clothes on top of them. Perhaps my reason for adding various things to my photographs in this manner is because I’m searching for materiality. I want to move away from creating images and bring the works into existence as material objects. Even when making large-scale works, I’m still anticipating the final size of the work during the shooting phrase.

N. Fukushima: What sort of influence does being a minority living in a foreign country have on your work? Is there any connection between that and your work’s theme of “movement” or its senses of “midair suspension” and “floating”?

Y. Onodera: Hmm, well, Paris has many immigrants from various countries, and each has found a place where they belong. There are so many minorities that, on the contrary, I don’t really feel like a minority. On the other hand, having the opportunity to exhibit and work in China caused a major shift in my perception. Up until then, Japan and Europe had been my focal points. After exhibiting at the Shanghai Art Museum in 2006, I’ve taken to visiting once or twice a year, and I’ve developed ties with Korea as well. And my sense of my home has grown from “Japan” to the broader region of “Asia.” It’s a point of view I probably never could have gained if had remained in Japan.

N. Fukushima: It’s lovely, isn’t it?

Y. Onodera: For the artist, a world where not everything is clear is more comfortable. I mean to say, a world that’s diverse. Such a place isn’t a bad environment for creating.

N. Fukushima: Has being a woman, or being seen as a woman, been a hindrance to your career as an artist?

Y. Onodera: I was raised in a liberal home, so I didn’t really have a difficult time because I was woman. That said, there’s a social condition, particularly in Japan, in which women are repressed, and it’s a political issue as well. I would do anything I could to change the current situation.

Yuki Onodera, ACT-01 Leningrad, 2015, gelatin silver print, charcoal, pastel, crayon, collage on canvas, 211 x 422 cm, Courtesy of the artist

Yuki Onodera, Architectural Bodies and Events “Guernapur”, 2018, gelatin silver print, charcoal, pastel, crayon, collage on canvas, 300 x 734 cm, installation view: Focus, Maui Arts & Cultural Center, Schaefer International Gallery, Hawaii, USA, 2024, Courtesy of the artist

N. Fukushima: Your work doesn’t hammer home a feminist message, but there are aspects of it—your selection of images to reference, how you handle them, and how you approach your subjects—that also feel feminine. Such could also be said of Portrait of Second-hand Clothes. So, too, do ACT (2015–present) and Architectural Bodies and Events (Kenchikuteki karada to jiken, 2018–present) seem to have the effect of twisting, defamiliarizing, and disturbing the often masculine and macho image of architecture. While these works deal with architecture, they also serve to continue a pursuit of physicality and movement that links back to Muybridge’s Twist.

Y. Onodera: Nowadays, there are many women architects, but there is certainly also a macho air to architecture. The reason I wanted to take on architecture is that the state of architecture changed greatly after the advent of photography. Doesn’t architectural photography seem a bit greedy? As if the photographer’s aim of taking “cooler, more beautiful shots” comes to the forefront? Before photography, sketches were able to capture architecture precisely while making use of the individual perspectives of the people documenting it. The very premise of being photographed must have an effect on architecture itself, so I wanted to use architectural photography as a motif. At the Norman Foster (b. 1935) exhibition held at the Centre Pompidou in 2023, no photographs were exhibited. I imagine that this was due perhaps to a sense of discomfort with architectural photographs taken from certain unique perspectives. I am always consciously rethinking the power of photography as a medium when I create.