Absentee #243

Sayuri Ichida is a UK-based Japanese artist working in photography. Ichida’s practice focuses on themes of self-identity, reflecting on her own memory and life experience. In her photographs, she explores the complexities of emotional state by portraying the human form and sculptural objects.

After graduating from Tokyo Visual Arts College in 2006, she began her career in the commercial photography industry, first in Tokyo and later in New York. In 2016, she decided to shift her focus to art photography, eventually leading her to the University of Westminster, where she completed an MA with Distinction in Photography Arts in 2021.

Her work has been recognized at numerous exhibitions and has received multiple awards. She won the Japan Photo Award in 2016 for her Deja Vu series - a house series inspired by the memory of her childhood dollhouse. Her series Mayu - named after a Japanese ballet dancer - was selected for several group shows presented at Unseen Photo Festival (Amsterdam, 2018), Photo Saint Germain (Paris, 2018), IMA Gallery (Tokyo, 2018), and Asama International Photo Festival (Nagano, 2019). Her work featuring Gabrielle Chanel’s Paris apartment was on exhibit at IMA Gallery as part of CHANEL’s MADEMOISELLE PRIVÉ show in Tokyo. She was selected to participate in the group show, TODAY is - Next generations of DAIDO MORIYAMA in 2019. She released her first self-published artist book, Absentee, in 2021, and her second artist book Fumiko will be published in 2022. IBASHO and the(M) éditions will publish the trade version of Absentee in September 2022, presenting the book and her work at Unseen Amsterdam and in a solo exhibition at IBASHO.