Akemi Kodama

I am a contemporary artist based in Hyogo, Japan.

After working for many years in digital design, I became increasingly drawn to tactile, analog processes. I later studied oil painting at Musashino Art University, where I explored a wide range of materials, techniques, and forms of self-expression.

My practice focuses on memory, time, traces, and the accumulation of everyday experience. Using paper, acrylic paint, oil paint, ink, and collage, I build up, peel away, cover, and reconstruct layers on the surface. These physical processes reflect the way memories shift, overlap, fade, and remain.

Rather than depicting specific scenes, I work intuitively with fragments, textures, marks, and traces. I am interested in how ordinary materials and visual fragments can be transformed into new relationships, and how a work can continue to change through the act of making.

My current practice includes the series “Traces of Memory,” “Fragments of Everyday Life,” and “Reconstructed Traces.”

My work has received recognition in international and Japanese exhibitions, including the Bulgarian International Biennale, the Shunyo Exhibition, and the Kansai Shunyo Exhibition, where I received an Encouragement Prize and the Holbein Award.

My work w...

BFA, Department of Oil Painting, Musashino Art University, Japan

2019/04 — The 96th Shunyo Exhibition (The National Art Center, Tokyo / Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts)
2018/11 — The 50th Group Nakanoshima Exhibition
2018/09 — Shunyo Kansai Exhibition
2018/04 — The 95th Shunyo Exhibition (The National Art Center, Tokyo / Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts)
2018/01 — Musashino Art University Hyogo Branch Exhibition (Mori Art Museum, Harada)
2017/04 — The 94th Shunyo Exhibition (The National Art Center, Tokyo / Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts)