Shu Yonezawa Solo exhibition “Voiceless Voice”
session：2026.7.17fri - 9.5sat 13:00 - 19:00
*closed on Sun, Mon, Tue and public holidays.
*Summer holidays：2026.8.12wed - 2026.8.15sat
venue：SNOW Contemporary / 404 Hayano Bldg. 2-13-12 Nishiazabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo
opening reception : 2026.7.17fri 17:00 - 19:00
Shu Yonezawa is a highly anticipated emerging artist whose interdisciplinary practice spans contemporary art and animation. In recent years, Yonezawa has participated in numerous group exhibitions and art festivals, actively presenting works across video, painting, and installation. Her practice centers on the concept of anima (“soul”), the etymological root of the word animation, exploring the corporeality of characters in digital animation alongside the embodied emotions and inner lives of living beings in the physical world.
In 2022, Yonezawa presented no name (Tokyo Arts and Space Hongo [OPEN SITE 7]) and Obake no B’: The Movie (NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC]). That same year, she also participated in “Planet Zamza,” an exhibition held at an abandoned factory. In 2023, she presented several solo exhibitions, including “Happy Birth” (PARCO MUSEUM TOKYO), while expanding her artistic practice by working on VJ performances, music event planning, and artworks for album covers and music videos. In 2024, Yonezawa presented the solo exhibition “Skin of the Sea, the Bones of the Absent” at SNOW Contemporary. In 2025, she presented works in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including “Pavilion ZERO” (Kasai Rinkai Park) and “Pavilion ZERO Documents Room” (Civic Creative Base Tokyo [CCBT]). That same year, she was selected for the inaugural Japanese edition of the artist-in-residence program by LVMH Métiers d'Art, and presented the solo exhibition “Scars of Light” at La Main in Paris, further expanding her activities overseas.
This exhibition, Yonezawa’s third solo presentation at SNOW Contemporary, is centered on the paintings she has developed in recent years. According to Yonezawa, the more she attempts to define the contours of a character through painting, the more ambiguous its presence becomes, while traces of what remains unpainted or overlooked emerge with increasing intensity. Through this process, she found herself returning to a fundamental question: What is it that shapes a character (anima)?
Drawing on Yonezawa's background in animation as its point of departure, this exhibition explores the nature of the “character” before it is reduced to personality or narrative. We recognize others through bodies, gestures, voices, language, cries, individuality, and countless other attributes. These elements do not constitute a fixed essence. Rather, they exist as overlapping and constantly shifting signs. Yonezawa attempts to approach the anima that exists prior to the formation of character, something that cannot be fully grasped through signs alone. At the same time, she seeks to engage with the moment when the contours and fluctuations of a world begin to emerge before characters are codified and assigned meaning. Through paintings, drawings, video, and sculptural works, Yonezawa seeks to give form to the exhibition's central idea, “Voiceless Voice,” to life in the gallery space.
We cordially invite all to experience firsthand the new corporeality of Yonezawa’s characters and the shifting contours of their presence in this exhibition.
Shu Yonezawa "Voiceless Voice"
Artist Statement
Last year, I painted in oils.
The more I tried to choose and define forms, the more it felt as though I was cutting away everything I had not chosen. It became suffocating, and the paintings gradually grew whiter. Painted in muted tones and subtle variations of hue, what emerged were presences too faint and too complex to be recognized as characters, existing before voice itself. Those paintings became the starting point for this exhibition.
We naturally and precariously carry within us signs such as our bodies, actions, spoken voices, language, cries, personalities, and attributes. As these signs accumulate alongside memories, emotions, and relationships with other beings and our surroundings, animated beings come to be recognized as characters. Throughout the history of character theory, signs have been partially detached from personality and narrative, while continuing to be quoted, exchanged, and repeated in ever-changing forms.
The “voiceless voice” explored in this exhibition is not a metaphor for those deprived of the right to speak. Rather, it is expressed as an anima that cannot be fully grasped through signs alone. Perhaps the world is not made up of characters. Perhaps something that is not yet a character begins to emerge from the world itself. Neither specific nor anonymous, I want to observe what lies beyond signs, and what exists between one sign and another, as “characters whose nature is animation,” or simply as living beings.
Within memory and the unconscious, thoughts and unspoken thoughts, images and reality drift together in subtle gradients. If the act of recognizing and choosing itself functions as a kind of mask, then the complexity beyond it, together with everything that escapes our grasp, is left behind, if only for a moment, by time. Never fully shared with others, these fragments remain within us as private knowledge, quietly arranged in gardens protected by each person's unconscious.
When I think about the distances between the events that take place every day in this world, whether a death far away or a glass breaking at home, whether immense and distant or small and close at hand, I want to reflect on what it means to be alive now, on the emotions that continue to arise in each passing moment, and on the complexity of the world before it is given meaning.
session：2026.7.17fri - 9.5sat 13:00 - 19:00
*closed on Sun, Mon, Tue and public holidays.
*Summer holidays：2026.8.12wed - 2026.8.15sat
venue：SNOW Contemporary / 404 Hayano Bldg. 2-13-12 Nishiazabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo
opening reception : 2026.7.17fri 17:00 - 19:00
Shu Yonezawa is a highly anticipated emerging artist whose interdisciplinary practice spans contemporary art and animation. In recent years, Yonezawa has participated in numerous group exhibitions and art festivals, actively presenting works across video, painting, and installation. Her practice centers on the concept of anima (“soul”), the etymological root of the word animation, exploring the corporeality of characters in digital animation alongside the embodied emotions and inner lives of living beings in the physical world.
In 2022, Yonezawa presented no name (Tokyo Arts and Space Hongo [OPEN SITE 7]) and Obake no B’: The Movie (NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC]). That same year, she also participated in “Planet Zamza,” an exhibition held at an abandoned factory. In 2023, she presented several solo exhibitions, including “Happy Birth” (PARCO MUSEUM TOKYO), while expanding her artistic practice by working on VJ performances, music event planning, and artworks for album covers and music videos. In 2024, Yonezawa presented the solo exhibition “Skin of the Sea, the Bones of the Absent” at SNOW Contemporary. In 2025, she presented works in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including “Pavilion ZERO” (Kasai Rinkai Park) and “Pavilion ZERO Documents Room” (Civic Creative Base Tokyo [CCBT]). That same year, she was selected for the inaugural Japanese edition of the artist-in-residence program by LVMH Métiers d'Art, and presented the solo exhibition “Scars of Light” at La Main in Paris, further expanding her activities overseas.
This exhibition, Yonezawa’s third solo presentation at SNOW Contemporary, is centered on the paintings she has developed in recent years. According to Yonezawa, the more she attempts to define the contours of a character through painting, the more ambiguous its presence becomes, while traces of what remains unpainted or overlooked emerge with increasing intensity. Through this process, she found herself returning to a fundamental question: What is it that shapes a character (anima)?
Drawing on Yonezawa's background in animation as its point of departure, this exhibition explores the nature of the “character” before it is reduced to personality or narrative. We recognize others through bodies, gestures, voices, language, cries, individuality, and countless other attributes. These elements do not constitute a fixed essence. Rather, they exist as overlapping and constantly shifting signs. Yonezawa attempts to approach the anima that exists prior to the formation of character, something that cannot be fully grasped through signs alone. At the same time, she seeks to engage with the moment when the contours and fluctuations of a world begin to emerge before characters are codified and assigned meaning. Through paintings, drawings, video, and sculptural works, Yonezawa seeks to give form to the exhibition's central idea, “Voiceless Voice,” to life in the gallery space.
We cordially invite all to experience firsthand the new corporeality of Yonezawa’s characters and the shifting contours of their presence in this exhibition.
Shu Yonezawa "Voiceless Voice"
Artist Statement
Last year, I painted in oils.
The more I tried to choose and define forms, the more it felt as though I was cutting away everything I had not chosen. It became suffocating, and the paintings gradually grew whiter. Painted in muted tones and subtle variations of hue, what emerged were presences too faint and too complex to be recognized as characters, existing before voice itself. Those paintings became the starting point for this exhibition.
We naturally and precariously carry within us signs such as our bodies, actions, spoken voices, language, cries, personalities, and attributes. As these signs accumulate alongside memories, emotions, and relationships with other beings and our surroundings, animated beings come to be recognized as characters. Throughout the history of character theory, signs have been partially detached from personality and narrative, while continuing to be quoted, exchanged, and repeated in ever-changing forms.
The “voiceless voice” explored in this exhibition is not a metaphor for those deprived of the right to speak. Rather, it is expressed as an anima that cannot be fully grasped through signs alone. Perhaps the world is not made up of characters. Perhaps something that is not yet a character begins to emerge from the world itself. Neither specific nor anonymous, I want to observe what lies beyond signs, and what exists between one sign and another, as “characters whose nature is animation,” or simply as living beings.
Within memory and the unconscious, thoughts and unspoken thoughts, images and reality drift together in subtle gradients. If the act of recognizing and choosing itself functions as a kind of mask, then the complexity beyond it, together with everything that escapes our grasp, is left behind, if only for a moment, by time. Never fully shared with others, these fragments remain within us as private knowledge, quietly arranged in gardens protected by each person's unconscious.
When I think about the distances between the events that take place every day in this world, whether a death far away or a glass breaking at home, whether immense and distant or small and close at hand, I want to reflect on what it means to be alive now, on the emotions that continue to arise in each passing moment, and on the complexity of the world before it is given meaning.
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