Alongside her artistic practice, she draws on her experience of obtaining a medical license in 2020 to create video installations exploring the “periphery,” crossing the fields of contemporary art and cultural anthropology. 
During the fellowship, she will conduct research around four themes: the “road movie,” said to have originated in the U.S.; movement through the history and present of immigration; “image therapy,” linked to visual media; and the hand-eating culture of Native American and immigrant communities. She aims to incorporate these investigations into new forms and structures in her artistic work.

Profile
Aki Yahata is a contemporary artist exploring geographical, social, and spiritual “peripheries.” She creates multi-layered video works and installations based on fieldwork and research. Recently, she has developed an online archive of global hand-eating cultures and produces road movies as image-based therapy. Selected exhibitions include Aki Yahata: Don’t Call it Beshbarmak (The Triangle, Kyoto, 2023) and On This Day, a Day She Wanted to Live (HENKYO.studio, Kyoto, 2021). Her works are held in public collections including the Mori Art Museum, Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, and National Gallery of Victoria. She holds an M.F.A. from Tokyo University of the Arts and an M.D. from Shiga University of Medical Science.