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Qenji Yoshida (よしだ毛んじ、ヨシダケンジ)


As an Artist:

I am an artist based in Osaka, exploring what it means to be together—not through perfect understanding, but through shared misunderstandings, gentle collisions, and poetic dissonance.

My work often begins where words fall short: between people who don't speak the same language, between humans and animals, or even between who I am and who I appear to be. These encounters don't always produce clarity. Instead, they generate interference, a kind of resonance in the gaps. I’m fascinated by how two monologues—speaking past one another—can still create something shared, something neither side expected.

 

Using conceptual art, performance, video, and text, I aim to work with the art of not understanding—turning confusion and ambiguity into sites of curiosity. Rather than trying to resolve differences, I let them co-exist, echo, and shift the way we perceive meaning and presence.

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As TRA-TRAVEL:

As a co-founder of TRA-TRAVEL an artist hub in Osaka, I co-curate exhibitions, run an online art school, and coordinate international artist residencies and talks. I see it as an extension of my own practice—an experiment in how people connect, mis/communicate, and create across differences.

As a Person:

My CV lists past “official” events. But I feel that what has actually shaped me more are the personal encounters: my teacher from fashion college, a monk who taught at my Buddhist high school, the American guys who stayed at my childhood home for 10 years, my wife, my kids, friends, ex-friends, ex-enemy, someone I met who was sitting next to me on a plane, my neighbors, and my dad who passed away in 2024.

The happy fact, at least to me, is that art is a journey. Sometimes I carefully plan it, and other times I approach it spontaneously, but in the end, I hope to arrive at a place I never imagined at the start. 

Copyright ©︎ Qenji Yoshida All Rights Reserved.

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