Erika Kobayashi was born in 1978 in Tokyo. In 2007 – 2008 she was invited to New York as an Asian Cultural Council Fellow. She currently lives and works in Tokyo.
Kobayashi creates works that are inspired from things that are invisible to the eye, time and history, family and memory, and the traces of place. In 2014 she was nominated for the 27th Mishima Yukio Award and the 151st Akutagawa Award for her novel, Madame Curie to choshoku wo (Breakfast with Madame Curie), published by Sueisha. In parallel, she has presented installation works both in Japan and overseas, which enable viewers to re-experience various scenes in which the elements of fiction and documentary from her writings drift back and forth between personal narrative and social reality.
Her other publications include the collection of short stories She Looks into the Mirror (Shueisha), the nonfictional work Shin’ai naru Kitty tachi e (Your Dear Kitty) inspired by the diaries of Anne Frank and based on the diary of Kobayashi father, the graphic novel Hikari no kodomo 1.2 LUMINOUS (Children of Light: Luminous) which traces the history of the atom and of radiation, and a book of her recent texts, drawings, and comics, Wasurerarenai Mono (I Can’t Forget) (Seidosha).
Kobayashi’s recent exhibition include, “Erika Kobayashi, Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings” Yutaka Kikutake Gallery, Tokyo (2024); “Group Exhibition: Yang Bo, Ryohei Kazumi, Erika Kobayashi, Futoshi Miyagi” Yutaka Kikutake. Gallery, Tokyo (2024); "Children and War", University of the Sacred Heart, Tokyo (2023); “Various Lives- Life and Death, Joy and Sorrow”, Karuizawa New Art Museum, Nagano (2022); “OMOSHIROGARA”, Museum DKM, Germany (2022); “Protectors of Love and Peace (Tentative)”, Yutaka Kikutake Gallery, Tokyo (2022); and "I Am a Girl Who Will Never Die. / Séance”, Yutaka Kikutake Gallery, Tokyo (2021).