Yasumasa Morimura (森村 泰昌, born June 11, 1951, is a Japanese appropriation artist. He was born in Osaka and graduated from Kyoto City University of Arts in 1978. Since 1985, Morimura has primarily shown his work in international solo exhibitions, although he has been involved in various group exhibitions.
Yasumasa Morimura borrows images from historical artists (ranging from Edouard Manet to Rembrandt to Cindy Sherman), and inserts his own face and body into them.
Among others, Morimura's exhibitions have been shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1992), the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in Jouy-en-Josas, France (1993), the Hara Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan (1994), the Guggenheim Museum (1994), the Yokohama Museum of Art in Yokohama, Japan (1996), Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (2006), and the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia (2007).
Morimura has created a series of hybrid self-portraits modeled after the art of Frida Kahlo.
He was nominated for the Hugo Boss Prize in 1996. The Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh), the Honolulu Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles), Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York) are among the public collections holding work by Yasumasa Morimura.