Artist Spotlight: Jiro Osuga

Jiro Osuga’s Departures (2023) imagines a borderless universe where people and ideas intermingle creatively.

Listen to Jiro as he reflects on how his experiences as a migrant shape the themes in his work, and hear a bit about his fascination with airports — from the planes to the people and procedures. Video by Felix Ursell.

Jiro Osuga was born in Tokyo in 1968, and was raised in Japan and the United Kingdom. He studied painting at Chelsea School of Art and the Royal College of Art, and now lives and works in London. He is represented by Flowers Gallery.

You know, migration is reality. It’s my person. I myself am unthinkable without my experience of having two homes, having moved.

Jiro Osuga, May 2021. Photograph: Antonio Parente.

Close-up of Departures, 2023. Photograph: courtesy Flowers Gallery.

Airports have a particular personal resonance for Jiro Osuga, as he grew up shuttling between his native Japan and the UK. In this imaginary departure lounge, he draws attention to the complex cultural crosscurrents that inform him and many others like him by playfully interspersing fantastical and historical characters among the travellers waiting to board their flights.

These characters include:
Mito Komon – the main character in a long-running Japanese TV costume drama
Figures from Nighthawks (1942) – the famous painting by Edward Hopper
Charon Airlines – named for the ferryman who carries the dead to the Underworld in Greek mythology

There isn’t a single reading. It’s meant to be open to interpretation in many ways. It is partly about my background as a transnational person, but it’s also about imagination, and travel, and creativity.

Departures, 2023. Displayed at Migration Museum’s exhibition All Our Stories: Migration and the Making of Britain. Photograph: Elzbieta Piekacz.

Jiro’s work was featured as part of our major exhibition — All Our Stories: Migration and the Making of Britain (2024-25).

The section of Departures that was featured in All Our Stories represents about a quarter of the room-sized installation first exhibited at Flowers Gallery in London in 2023.

Exhibition: All our Stories — Migration and the Making of Britain

All Our Stories: Migration and the Making of Britain brought together the Migration Museum’s work over the past decade, alongside new stories and artwork that highlight just how central migration is to our lives. It ran from September 2024 until March 2025.

All Our Stories explored the reasons why people migrate, experiences of arriving and settling and questions of identity and belonging. Migration often hits the headlines and sparks heated political and online debates. But if you dig deeper, there’s an underlying story of people coming and going, stretching back many centuries. The movement of people across the ages has profoundly shaped our landscapes and cities, our diets and fashions, our language and culture, and our ideas and beliefs. The story of migration goes to the heart of who we are today. And we all have a personal connection to this story.

Learn more about our major exhibition All Our Stories here.

This feature is part of the Migration Museum’s Artist Spotlight series. Here we feature interviews with artists that we have collaborated with over the years. The series highlights both established artists involved in our major exhibitions and emerging voices who have contributed to our community-curated exhibition.

Becky-Dee Trevenen
Zhara Elizabeth