Yu Hirai was born in Japan, which she left for good at the age of 20 in order to move to Europe.
From 1985-88, she studied drawing at La Cambre in Brussels. After that she lived and worked in Barcelona, then in Berlin from 1992 to 1999 where she started to work with photography.
In 1999 she took part in the residency programme at Light Work (Syracuse University/USA).
After a second residency at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin/Ireland), she received a bursary from UNESCO Aschberg for photography in Mexico. In 2002-03, she was a resident at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. Since then she has continued to live and work in Paris.
Since 1988, she has regularly presented her work in the form of solo and group shows, and at many international art festivals. For example, she did solo show at Phot’Aix 2018 in France and Maya Lullaby in 2021 at the Festival Nuit Blanche at the French Institut /Japan; she took part in a group exhibition in 2019 at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art and Dali International in China.
She won the Parcours Prize at Festival Phot’Aix 2017.
Yu Hirai works through photography as well as drawings, paintings and videos. In 2021 She made a short video work Maya Lullaby.
Her drawings book was published in 2021 by edition iki.
