Born on Awaji Island, Hyogo, Japan, Asami Kiyokawa is a contemporary artist and art director based in Tokyo. She is known for using her distinctive technique of adding embroidery to photographs, magazines, books, fabric, and other media to create works in which she visualizes emotions that are normally not visualized, or disparities and contradictions that emerge between an individual’s inner self and the external appearance created by the media.

Kiyokawa began creating art in the latter half of the 1990s, and held her first solo exhibition in 2001. Since then, in an age where society is inundated by a deluge of imagery, she has explored wavering personal identity and the body’s relationship with memory, mythological imagination, and technology. Her practice spans many different media, including embroidery, photography, textiles, and digital images.

The visualization of unseen worlds is at the heart of her art, which weaves together the boundaries between materiality and immateriality, analog and digital. In recent years, she has engaged in collaborations with AI and virtual reality, expanding her range of expression to include video, public art, and installations, and presenting numerous projects in which she applies an embroidery-like approach to reweave urban spaces and the structure of society itself.

Kiyokawa’s works are shown at art museums, art fairs, and cultural institutions throughout the world. She engages in collaborations in a wide variety of areas, including advertising, videos, product design, and regional revitalization projects.

Her many awards include the VOCA [The Vision of Contemporary Art] award, the VOGUE JAPAN Women of the Year award, and the ASIAGRAPH Award’s Tsumugi Prize.

She oversaw the creation of Our New World (Toranomon), permanent public art unveiled at Tokyo Metro’s Toranomon Hills Station in 2023, which was acclaimed as a major work that expands the concept of urban space.

Kiyokawa is currently an Associate Professor at Osaka University of Arts, actively engaged in both teaching and social projects.

COLLECTING An Asami Kiyokawa Documentary(2012／KYURYUDO ART PUBLISHING CO.,LTD.)
TOKYO MONSTER(2014／NIPPAN IPS Co., Ltd)
I:I(2016／KAWADE SHOBO SHINSHA)
Saishu(2018／PIE International)