Hana Watanabe

Hana Watanabe  (born in 1995 in Tokyo, Japan) is a Japanese photographer and contemporary artist working in the genres portraiture, street photography, installation, and collage.

In 2016, Watanabe was awarded the prestigious Kimura Ihei Award. Watanabe is a art lecturer at Waseda, Tokyo and Musashino Universities in Tokyo and a visiting professor at Kyoto Art University.

She was nominated for the Art Deviant award by Yasumasa Araki, one of Japan’s best known artists.
In 2017, Watanabe had a two-person exhibition with the American photographer Anne Renn at the Parco Gallery, Tokyo.
Following this encounter with Renn, she embarked on a MFA at the California Institute of the Arts under her supervision.

In at times disturbing photographs, has tested public perceptions on obscenity and censorship in her home country.

Watanabe has published numerous important collage monographs that deal with the family, gender, identity and sexuality, such as “Albino boxes” (see below) “Tomiro’s nightmares” “Sun Burst” or “PhotoEgo”
The series of photos and collages depicts biographical stories from her childhood.