Shingo Yoshida (b. in 1974, Tokyo) received his MA with highest honors from Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Art, Villa Arson in Nice France in 2004. In 2005 he earned a post-graduate diploma at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, France, and subsequently in 2007 he received another post-graduate diploma in the Program La Seine of Ecole Nationale Supérieure des BeauxArts de Paris.

He completed the prestigious international artist residencies at Villa Arson Nice France – and was awarded the Fellowship of Overseas Study Programme for Artists by the Agency for Cultural Affairs of the Japanese Government. Yoshida’s work has been shown in many international exhibitions, including: Palais de Tokyo, Paris; the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo MAC, Santiago, Chile; Arte tv Creative; Based in Berlin by Klaus Biesenbach, Christine Macel and Hans Ulrich Obrist.

In 2017, MOMENTUM invited him to show his film and photographs made in Siberia in an exhibition for the UN Conference on Climate Change, COP23. Subsequently, his work came to be acquired by the Art Collection of the Ministry of Environment, Germany. In 2016, his film works entered the collections of three major institutions in Berlin: the Berlinische Galerie, the Akademie der Künste, and Fluentum.

Heathrow Airport: Corona Diary (2020) was shot at the end of April, while the artist was en-route to his native Japan, when many countries worldwide were still in lockdown. Yoshida had not set out to make an artwork out of his journey home, but was so captivated by the anomaly of an empty airport – normally one of the world’s busiest temples to transit – that he could not resist recording the surreal spectacle.

This is the portrait of the artist as a young man. Shingo Yoshida was born in 1974 (nineteen hundred and seventy-four) – the same year a group of people chose to carry a giant stone to the highest peak of Mount Fuji, the “Emblem of Japan” that has been revered since ancient times. This symbolic gesture executed by the artist’s father ‒ and grandfather ‒ was as reckless as the young artist’s decision 23 (twentythree) years later to leave his country of birth and to move to France. His artistic work is from the beginning largely autobiographical, the long list of travels and exhibitions describes accurately the process by which a young man reaches maturity and self-awareness. But the exhibition shows something more, this is an invitation “au voyage”. Shingo Yoshida is not walking alone, we are always on his side, travelling with him carefully in the movement of the images, we are freezing with him as he climbs to the top of Mount Fuji, we are starving with him, then resting together – with him and with the ghosts. We are looking out over the wide sea of clouds, we are walking in the night with him and abandoning our fears in the darkness… Like Dedalus, the genius artist and fictional alter ego of his creator, the Irish poet James Joyce, Shingo Yoshida is “A man of genius (who) makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery”. Like Deadalus, the famous figure of Greek mythology and father of Icarus, Shingo Yoshida bravely ventures into the labyrinth of landscapes and cities, and we are following him to the exit, gently climbing to the summit of the mountain and/or wandering through the gallery space.