Born in Shizuoka, Japan in 1962.
 
Kunihiko Yazawa entered Bunka Fashion College in 1982, and after graduating started teaching at his alma mater. Between 1989 and 2005, he taught at the Musashino University of Art in Japan.
 
Yazawa’s multidisciplinary practice explores the essence of art and the possibilities of what art can be in the 21st century through his concept of “art that emerges from dialogue, art that creates dialogue.” Yazawa’s art – from his paintings, to his large-scale art projects EGAKU (2002- ongoing) and Vision Art (2001- ongoing) - invite the viewer to engage in a dialogue with the self, with others and the the world. His participatory art project, EGAKU which has engaged over 26,000 people from all walks of life and all ages, explores art as a socially engaged practice that can transcend boundaries - between artist and the audience, language, race, gender, age.
 
Yazawa’s artistic vision is informed by a distinctly Japanese philosophical view of the relationship between man and nature often seen in traditional Japanese ink paintings, one which sees man as being at one with and as a part of nature. Although this relationship with nature and the deep reverence and sense of wonder and awe of our place in nature is a recurring theme in Yazawa’s work, in recent years there is a new sense of freedom in the way he approaches this theme in the series, fragments (2019-2020), and continues to develop further in Planet of Voices (2021-2022) and his latest body of work, my herbarium (2022- ongoing). These works created from a dialogue with the natural world, reflected through the lens of Yazawa’s imagination seem to connect the universe within with the universe without, merging the invisible world and the visible into one.