Works and lives in Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Sculptor and ceramist, Megumi Yuasa began working with the visual arts in 1964, when he made his first ceramics. He then traveled with his partner Naoko Yuasa to the hinterland of Goias state, researching techniques and materials. In 1968, he held his first exhibition in Goiania and returned to Sao Paulo the following year. His work soon became recognized. In 1971, he attended the Escola Brasil for six months, at the invitation of the painter Luiz Paulo Baravelli (1942). Since the beginning of his career, Megumi has always been present at exhibitions of Japanese-Brazilian artists, and at exhibitions focusing on the language of ceramics. Always imbued with a philosophical and political discourse, he is an artist with an anarchic bias in his practices, as he incorporates other materials into his ceramics, such as metals and paints, which departs from the traditional scope of Japanese ceramics.
In 1979, he began teaching ceramics, which he still does today, organizing courses and workshops. Between 1981 and 1982, he advised the Escola Senai Armando Arruda Sampaio. In 1982, he was invited to teach a ceramics course at Universidade Caxias do Sul. In 1984, he was invited by the Museu de Artes do Rio Grande do Sul (MARGS) to teach the course called Observação da Realidade (Observation of Reality). In 1987, he had a solo show at the São Paulo Art Gallery. In 1988, he was awarded the São Paulo Art Critics Association (APCA) Sculpture Prize. Still living in Itu, he started working at Gilberto Daccache's factory Cerâmica Aruan. There he had a spot in the factory where he modeled his pieces and taught the craft to the young workers who produced utilitarian objects. He also organized a library where they studied poetry, music and literature.
In 1989, he traveled to Lisbon (Portugal) to teach a course at the Brazilian Ceramics Seminar in Lisbon (Portugal). In 1991, he returned to the São Paulo Art Gallery with a new solo show. At the end of the 1990s, he had his last solo shows at Skultura Galeria de Arte (São Paulo), in 1997, and at Galeria LGC Arte Hoje (Rio de Janeiro), in 1998. Among group exhibitions are the 13th and 14th editions of the Bienal Internacional de São Paulo (1975 and 1977, respectively); the 1987 Encuentro de Ceramistas Contemporaneos de America Latina (Encounter of Contemporary Ceramists of Latin America), which toured the Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art (New York, USA), Museum of Fine Arts (St. Pittsburg, USA), Centro de Arte Contemporaneo (Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico), Museo de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Bogotá, Colombia), Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro, Brasil); Sala Nacional de Exposiciones (Buenos Aires, Argentina), among others. He also took part in the group show Laços do Olhar, in 2008 at the Instituto Tomie Ohtake (São Paulo, Brasil) and in 2023 he was part of the group show O Curso do Sol, at Gomide&Co, also in São Paulo. He has taken part in various ceramics festivals and conferences, as well as exhibitions organized around the anniversary of the Japanese immigration to Brazil. Throughout his career and still nowadays, Megumi Yuasa has also given workshops, lectures and courses in the subjects that cover his practices.