Born in Japan, Swiss artist David Favrod creates photographs, drawings, 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.
Favrod was selected as a FOAM Talent in 2015 and is the recipient of the 2013 Lens Culture Exposure Award, 2010 Aperture Portfolio Prize and has won the Swiss Design Award in 2010. His work is found in numerous public collections, among them Rome’s Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma, the C/O Berlin, the Elysee Museum in Switzerland, and the collection of the Kunstmuseum in Thun also in Switzerland.
He received a Master’s Degree in Art Direction and a Bachelor’s in photography from the Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne.
Favrod has had solo and group exhibitions around the globe. He has shown at the C/O Berlin, the Deutsche Börse in Eschborn, the Aperture Foundation in New York, the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe, the Houston Center for Photography, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in Toronto, the OCAT in Shanghai and Shenzhen, the Benaki Museum in Athens and the Kunstmuseum in Thun.