Yu Araki (b. 1985, Yamagata City, Japan) is an artist and filmmaker based in Kyoto, Japan. He majored in sculpture at Washington University in St. Louis (USA) and furthered his studies at Graduate School of Film and New Media, Tokyo University of the Arts (Japan). His work centers on themes of mistranslation and the creative potential that emerges from ‘getting it wrong,’ inspired by his early experiences as a failed English/Japanese interpreter.
Recent exhibitions include venues such as Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (2024), Towada Art Center (Aomori, 2023), C-LAB (Taipei, 2023), Pola Museum of Art (Kanagawa, 2020), Shiseido Gallery (Tokyo, 2019), Art Sonje Center (Seoul, 2019), and Fundació Joan Miró (Barcelona, 2018). His films have been screened at CAM Gulbenkian, Porto/Post/Doc, ICA, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, FID Marseille, Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, BFI London Film Festival, IndieLisboa, EMAF, DMZ International Documentary Film Festival, EXiS Experimental Film & Video Festival in Seoul, IndieLisboa, Image Forum Festival, JAPAN CUTS, Videoex, and International Film Festival Rotterdam, where he won the Ammodo Tiger Short Film Award in 2018.
During 2017-18, he was a guest resident at Asia Culture Center in Gwangju as well as Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam. Araki was selected as one of the finalists for the Future Generation Art Prize 2019. He won the Special Prize in the Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2023 Commission Project for “Unmasked (Bootleg)”. In 2024, he was awarded an overseas fellowship from the Pola Art Foundation to conduct research with CAM Gulbenkian.