MOTOYUKI SHITAMICHI (b. Okayama, Japan, 1978) is a contemporary artist, curator, and researcher. Shitamichi graduated from Musashino University in 2001 with a BFA in painting, followed by postgraduate studies at the Tokyo College of Photography until 2003. He has been actively publishing photo books since 2005, and was a visiting researcher at the National Museum of Ethnology from 2016-19. Shitamichi presented Tsunami Boulder as a representative of Japan at the 2019 Venice Biennale and exhibited at the 2018 and 2012 Gwangju Biennales. In 2020, he received the 21st Okayama Arts and Culture Award Grand Prize, as well the Tokyo Contemporary Art Award in 2019. Shitamichi has been based in the village of Honmura on the art island of Naoshima in the Seto Inland Sea since 2019, when he started the Setouchi “” Archive at Miyanoura Gallery 6—the quotes are filled to match each new project’s theme.

Shitamichi has exhibited extensively throughout Japan and abroad, including a solo exhibition at Alison Bradley Projects titled Floating Monuments (2023), and solo exhibitions in museums including at Kunsthal Aarhus, Denmark (2022); Ohara Museum of Art, Okayama (2019); and Kurobe City Art Museum, Toyama (2016). His work has also been featured in major international exhibitions including the Setouchi Triennale (2022, 2025), Prism of the Real: Making Art in Japan 1989–2010 at The National Art Center, Tokyo (2025), the inaugural exhibition of the Naoshima New Museum of Art (2025), the George Eastman Museum, New York (2024), the Gwangju Biennale, and Roppongi Crossing at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo. His work is held in the collections of KADIST, Paris and San Francisco; the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; the National Museum of Art, Osaka; the Takamatsu Art Museum; the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art; and the Ishikawa Foundation, among others.