Akiko Yamamoto is a Japanese-born, Brooklyn-based artist whose work explores the fragmented nature of migration, identity, and cultural translation. Through labor-intensive processes of layering and excavation, her work embodies the experience of moving between cultures—constantly learning, unlearning, and reconstructing meaning across different contexts.
Working with origami paper, rice paper, magazine clippings, silver leaf, and handmade rice glue, Yamamoto builds topographical surfaces that she then methodically sands and cuts away, revealing unexpected histories beneath. This process mirrors the renewal of traditional Japanese shoji screens while addressing the contemporary experience of displacement. Her compositions exist in deliberate flux— resembling puzzles either coalescing into form or dispersing into fragments—creating a visual language where deconstructed shapes, vivid colors, and layered textures become iconographic representations for memory, ancestry, and place.
Yamamoto’s work has been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum (2024), ChaShaMa, and Red Fox Gallery, and featured in The New York Times and the SVA Continuing Education Newsletter. She was a NYFA Immigrant Artist Program Fellow (2021–2022) and a NYSCA/NYFA Artist as Entrepreneur Fellow (2025). She holds a B.A. from Rutgers University and maintains her studio practice in Brooklyn, New York.
Website: akikoyamamoto.myportfolio.com
