Yumiko Yoneda

Yumiko Yoneda

Born in 1965, Matsue, Japan
Lives and works in The Hague, Netherlands

Yumiko Yoneda is a sculptor whose work is immediately recognizable: rounded, predominantly white or grey, and charged with a quiet, concentrated presence. Her forms appear to hold tension from within - as if breath itself has been sealed inside - giving each piece an unmistakable sense of interior life. 

At the heart of her practice is the sphere, a shape that has served across cultures as an emblem of completeness: no beginning, no end, no hierarchy of direction. Simultaneously everything and nothing. Yoneda's forms inhabit this precise threshold - between fullness and emptiness, utterance and silence, power and stillness. She reaches toward perfection while fully embracing the hand's limitations, and it is exactly this tension that makes the work so compellingly human. Built over a polystyrene core and worked entirely by hand in plaster and sculpting paste, her surfaces are extraordinarily sensitive to light. As daylight shifts across them, each object appears alternately empty and full - inviting associations that form and dissolve without insistence. With radical economy of means, Yoneda achieves a rare amplitude of effect.

Yoneda’s recent exhibitions include Art Antwerp (Galerie Ramakers), Art Noord VII (Museum Belvédère, Heerenveen), ‘Najaarssalon’ (Pulchri Studio, The Hague), ‘30th Anniversary’ (Galerie Ramakers), ‘Communal Enthusiasm’ (Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht), ‘Minimal Excellence’ (iCOON Museum, Hoek van Holland), ‘INTERVAL’ (iCOON Museum, Hoek van Holland), and ‘Sculpture Garden’ (Galerie Ramakers, The Hague), among others.

Her work is included in collections such as the ABN AMRO Art Collection, AkzoNobel Art Collection, Rijnstate Art Collection, and the AVRO Collection. It is also part of the collection of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including presentations at the Embassy of the Netherlands in London, the Embassy of the Netherlands in Accra, and the Embassy of the Netherlands in Kuala Lumpur, among others.

She studied at Shimane University and at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht.