David Favrod

Born in Japan and now living and working in Europe, artist David Favrod creates photographs, videos, and installations that combine elements of multiple cultures and genres—he often portrays his personal struggle with conflicting aspects of his bicultural identity. Favrod’s images tend toward the fanciful and turn disturbing at times. Through them, Favrod borrows from the highly stylized compositions and visual drama of traditional Japanese prints and drawings, but his work is also informed by the conceptual practices of Western contemporary artists. In the 2009 photograph Batien & Ditien, for instance, Favrod pictures an elderly couple dressed in masks and makeup so as to explore revenants of Japanese and European culture, all in a strange, dreamlike domestic room or workshop.

Favrod is the recipient of the 2010 Aperture Portfolio Prize and has twice won the Swiss Design Award. His work is found in numerous public collections, among them Rome’s Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma, the Elysee Museum in Switzerland, and the collection of the City of Winterthur, also in Switzerlan. Favrod has shown at the Aperture Foundation in New York, the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe, the Houston Center for Photography, and the Biennale de la Photgraphie de Mulhouse in France.