GENERAL INFORMATION
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MESSAGE FROM
THE GENERAL PRODUCER
To dive into Tokyo (the city)
and engage deeply with society (people)
The Tokyo Biennale is a “social dive” type of international art festival that we build together by diving into various areas across Tokyo to discover the unique traditions and characteristics inherent in the people who live there while creating new values.
The theme for this running of the biennale, “Wander for Wonder,” describes our attempt to create a new form of “wandering” that brings us together softly and gently as we focus on points like “with whom” and “where” we wander.
Despite our world’s state of rising tension, even if we are strangers, the physical act of walking alongside someone becomes an opportunity to get to know each other, fostering our interest in the city and its culture to form the seeds of interaction. We wish to cherish the miraculous moment of “wandering together” considering our city of Tokyo that has nurtured a rich townscape upon its burnt ruins following events like the Great Kanto Earthquake and World War II. Most notably, it is important that we do not forget the existence of our foundational culture with its layers that include the city’s lifestyle, wisdom, faith, government, entertainment, and townspeople culture. Today, these are inconspicuously alive in every corner of the city and are important cultural resources that have the potential to become the soil for new creation. Using art projects, the Tokyo Biennale 2025 will take on the challenge of carefully picking up these hidden aspects of Tokyo’s foundational culture and connecting them to the future.
In doing so, through the imaginations and methodologies of artists, we will explore the potential of expression by intentionally wandering and actively taking detours around Tokyo. These art projects that weave new relationships through “wandering” will softly connect the city and people.
For example, when visitors go to see works like the installation at Toeizan Kan'ei-ji Temple, which is welcoming its 400th anniversary, or the artworks that are subtly placed in the city’s “gaps”, through casual exchanges between the scenery and people that happen along the way, discoveries await them that can only be made here and now. I invite visitors to stop and take a look when they come across something interesting. Here, they may find an unexpected moment that opens their heart.
By diving into Tokyo through the presentation of 14 exhibition venues, a diverse range of works by 37 participating artists, and a variety of “wandering” programs, the Tokyo Biennale 2025 will give rise to alternative art projects that connect deeply with the city.
Masato Nakamura
General Producer, Tokyo Biennale 2025
TOKYO BIENNALE 2025 THEME
Wander for Wonder
Freedom of movement and spirit, to and fro between the everyday and the extraordinary, traversing history—walking has brought mankind many benefits since ancient times. For modern urban dwellers living in constrained space and time, the act of “taking a walk” is becoming increasingly valuable.
Looking at the recent history of art, since the 1960s, artists have used their own bodies as a medium and expanded the practice of walking to reinterpret the world. Yoko Ono, Bruce Nauman, and Vito Acconci all successively turned "walking" into artworks, while Hamish Fulton continues his Walks series to this day. Walking has come to develop into a diverse range of expressions, including On Kawara's I Went, in which he inscribed his daily movements on a map with red lines, Richard Long's land art, Marina Abramović's walk along the Great Wall of China, works by Janet Cardiff that reconstruct cities aurally, as well as the numerous projects by Francis Alÿs. Gabriel Orozco, an artist who walks through cities around the world, seems to treat the city as his studio, with the moment of discovery itself becoming a kind of work for him. Following in the footsteps of these artists who have transformed the city into a place where art is generated from the moment of walking, the Tokyo Biennale 2025 will consider a walk as creation itself and the city as a place of expression, putting on exhibitions and projects that welcome people to “Tokyo” as an art studio for playing, wandering, detouring, encountering, contemplating, and discovering. While appreciating creative acts by each of the participating artists right in the city, the audience will have the opportunity to turn toward their own creative acts.
The aim of this art festival is to construct a circuit that will allow us to rediscover and share the latent resources in the city through the smallest act of walking against the backdrop of “Tokyo” as an enormous text. This biennale presents an opportunity for everyone to become somebody who creates while walking in the city, opening a new public horizon through the wonder that is brought by wandering.
Curatorial Member, Min Nishihara
TEAM
General Producer
Masato Nakamura
Curetrial Member
Susumu Namikawa
Hiroyuki Hattori
Min Nishihara
Supervising Producer
Shinobu Nakanishi
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