Profile
Jinn Yagi
八木 ジン
Artist / Photographer
Born in Kyoto, Japan, Jinn Yagi completed the Master’s Program in Interactive Design & Media at Middlesex University in London, earning a Master of Arts degree. He is a member of the Japan Professional Photographers Society (JPS). After holding his first solo exhibition in 2005, he marks the 20th anniversary of his artistic practice in 2025.
In September 2024, Yagi presented a solo exhibition at THE IW GALLERY in Brooklyn, New York, curated by Vida Sabbaghi, running for over a month. In 2026, a traveling exhibition was presented at EMPIRE STORES beneath the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, where the works remained on view for nearly a year within the historic architectural space.
Working from photography as a point of departure, Yagi moves between sculpture, textile, and installation, allowing multiple mediums and materials to intermingle. His works evoke the invisible distances, silences, and fragile boundaries embedded within contemporary society, allowing them to linger within space itself.
Yagi’s practice is characterized by an attempt to redefine photography not merely as a documentary medium, but as an “image summoned into space” — one that draws in borrowed landscapes, extracted color, emotional contours, and the aura residing within people and places. In particular, he has focused on transparent divisions reminiscent of the acrylic barriers installed between people during the pandemic, transforming the sediment of language, emotion, and residual memory into material experiences that exceed the flat surface of photography.
His body of work brings into presence the invisible tensions that emerge between individual and society, body and system, memory and history, both spatially and visually, in the space between people themselves.
In recent years, influenced by his mother’s background as a sculptor, Yagi has expanded into three-dimensional expression using lightweight materials such as Styrofoam. By dissolving the contours between photography and sculpture, he explores new modes of perception and embodied experience. His approach introduces sculptural physicality and environmental scale into an image culture historically confined to flatness, quietly unsettling the institutional frameworks through which photography has traditionally been understood.
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Solo Exhibitions
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2005 – HONESTY, etw, Kyoto
2020 – Unnatural Nature, KG+, LS STUDIO & Gallery, Kyoto
2021 – Ambiguous Border Patterns, KG+, LS STUDIO & Gallery, Kyoto
2022 – LGBTQ+, Kyoto Bar Association, Kyoto
Patterns of Boundaries Between Me and Others, KG+, LS STUDIO & Gallery, Kyoto
JINN YAGI SOLO EXHIBITION, TUNE STAY KYOTO, Kyoto
2023 – Sensitive Daily Life and Panicky Nights, KG+, backs Gazai Gallery, Kyoto
2024 – Rinne: Fragments of Circulation, KG+, backs Gazai Gallery, Kyoto
WILDBOYS film screening, Marché du Film, Cannes Film Festival, France
Kuu: Moments of Circularity, THE IW GALLERY, New York
2025 – 20 years, KG+, Art Space Kan, Kyoto
2026 – Social Layer – The Comfort of Silence, Art Space Kan, Kyoto
2026 – “You are Different” Jinn Yagi Solo Exhibition, Yodoyabashi Station One 30F, Osaka
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Group Exhibitions
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2022 – My Work Exhibition, Fuji Photo Salon & AMS Gallery, Kyoto and Osaka
2023 – 5th Kansai JPS Member Exhibition, Fuji Photo Salon & AMS Gallery, Kyoto and Osaka
2024 – 6th Kansai JPS Member Exhibition, Fuji Photo Salon & AMS Gallery, Kyoto and Osaka
2025 – 7th Kansai JPS Member Exhibition: Professional Eyes, Fuji Photo Salon & AMS Gallery, Kyoto and Osaka
・13th Discover the One Japanese Art 2025 in Paris, Espace Cinko, France
・The 12th Cheongju International Contemporary Art Exhibition, Schema Art Museum, South Korea
・“Creating Ma (間) — Between Korea and Japan,” Hall Keiryu, Kyoto
・Nikon Plaza Tokyo / Osaka THE GALLERY 2025
・Different Kyomachibori Art Fair 2025
2026 – NEW YORK EMPIRE STORES Traveling Exhibition
KUU – Moments of Circularity, Jinn Yagi & Mabo, Curated by Vida Sabbaghi
・MINERVA 2026 in London, Mall Galleries – West / East / North Galleries
・The 4th Kazu Nakagawa Exhibition, Osaka
・Yeoju International Photo Festival “Dialogue of Earth,” KG+ SPECIAL 2026, Kyoto Station Building 7F
・icon Contemporary Photography Exhibition 2026, SHIBUYA SACS, Tokyo
・Different Art Fair, Yodoyabashi Station One 30F, Osaka
・MINERVA 2026, Kyoto
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Selected Awards
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2025
・Silver Award, Open Category, Nikkor Photo Contest 2025
・Award Recipient, Epson Photo Grand Prix
2026
・WILDBOYS — Grand Prix for Best Film, 1st Hozugawa Film Festival (Producer / Artworks / Behind-the-Scenes Photography)
Film Festival Presentation
2024
WILDBOYS — Presented at the Marché du Film, 77th Cannes Film Festival
Collection
Schema Art Museum, South Korea
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Main Video Works
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2012 – Gift to the Earth, video installation for POLA Ginza, Tokyo
2024 – WILDBOYS (Producer), France
Showa Dengyo & KI NO BI promotional videos, Osaka & Kyoto
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Main Interactive Media Projects
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2017 – SHUFFLE, interactive table artwork synchronizing video and music, UK
Interactive window display project, UK
Service
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( 01 )
Total Produce
Total Produce
From photography for launching a new business to social media images, model casting, and video production, feel free to consult us.
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( 02 )
Photo Direction
Photo Direction
From tangible products to experiences and emotions, we translate them into photographs that communicate their value.
Product photography / Store & facility photography / Still photography -
( 03 )
Movie Direction
Movie Direction
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Video production / Film production -
( 04 )
Art Works
Art Works
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