During the Tokyo Biennale festival period, a variety of exhibitions and events will be held in various locations across Tokyo. One of these initiatives is TB Art Projects, in which multiple artists participate under specific themes.
This is a project that involves walking through this place we call “Tokyo”, visiting towns, alleys, topographies, buildings, waterfronts, and more as we trace the overlapping layers of time and memory from the past to the present to interpret the everyday act of “walking” or “wandering” in an academic way. The program will also hold a series of special lectures while walking through the streets as fieldwork practice. Sociologist Syunya Yoshimi will serve as president, with architectural historian Hidenobu Jinnai as vice president of the university, through which they will host walking tours of the city and a series of guest lectures.
» “Sanpo University” Report 1: A Special Symposium on “Wander for Wonder.”
This project is an attempt to grasp the structure of the city from the perspective of its physical and conceptual “gaps,” and to utilize these small spaces between buildings as places for presenting artworks or as artworks themselves. This is a legendary project that Masato Nakamura, along with his artist initiative Command N, carried out in 1999. For the biennale, sculptures by nine artists and groups that mimic potted plants will seemingly thread these gaps of back alleys together to enrich the city’s marginal spaces.
Artists will wander around Tokyo and create photographs of the city today. The original prints will be exhibited at a special venue and published on an online digital map, allowing people to visit the locations where the photographs were taken and experience the actual scenery. In addition, there will be a system in place for printing these photographs inexpensively on Fujifilm multi-copy machines at Seven-Eleven convenience stores, offering visitors new ways to enjoy viewing and collecting photographs.
“SOCIAL DIVE” is a project that invites artists from overseas to dive into the city of Tokyo to gain insights into the unique traditions held by local people and bring forth new values. As the participating artists interact with society, they will uncover hidden connections across the city which, for those living in Japan, may be unexpected or so familiar that they go unnoticed. For this running of the biennale, four artists were selected to participate from a pool of over 1,400 applications.
Many old wooden structures remain in central Tokyo, such as charming historic shops that represent “billboard architecture.” However, when they are demolished as part of the city’s metabolic system, they tend to fade from people’s memories. This project will make use of existing wooden structures, “Ebihara Shoten (former clothing store),” “Kamiya Goriten (former Ice shop),” and “Kakuchi Konpo (former packing store),” as festival venues that transmit the structures’ appeal and create opportunities for us to deepen our respect for Tokyo’s foundational culture. In addition, for this occasion we plan to hold lectures and walking tours led by architect and architectural historian Terunobu Fujimori.
This is a project that is being developed in collaboration with unique overseas art organizations. Presented by the Norway-based Tenthaus Art Collective, this project will be developed and carried out by The Oven, a collaborative platform that explores new ways of gathering, sharing knowledge, and sustaining collective practice. Based at Ebihara Shoten (a former clothing store) in Kanda, the project will activate the space through a series of public interventions, workshops, and site-responsive actions.
Fragmentary, diverse, and sensory realizations will be discovered through taking walks. These are clues that help us to actively update our interpretation of the world around us. Through this project, in conjunction with the “Wandering University” project, we will conduct fieldwork to create a new “art map” of Tokyo.
In addition to information on the exhibitions that are part of the Tokyo Biennale 2025, we will include notes on public art and cultural facilities, and the “This is Art Discovery Team” will gather interesting information hidden in the city by walking alongside local residents and experts.
Moreover, through the involvement of the “Edo-Tokyo Lifestyle Modernology (Kogengaku)” project that weaves stories using “Modernology (Kogengaku)”*, we will move through Nihonbashi-Bakurocho and Yaesu-Kyobashi areas to read the hidden traces of people living in the city from the Edo period to the present day, with Izumi Kuroishi (Professor at Fukushima Gakuin University), a leading researcher in Modernology (Kogengaku), as research leader.
*“Modernology (Kogengaku)” is a branch of sociology founded by Japanese architect and researcher Kon Wajiro in the 20th century, which centers on the study of everyday life.
A collaborative project between Yoshiharu Tsukamoto; professor of architecture at Institute of Science Tokyo (formerly Tokyo Institute of Technology) and co-founder of Atelier Bow-Wow and 6lines studio; an architecture collective consisting of Ryo Oyama, Kaho Katayama, Sho Sasaki, Tsuyoshi Fuchino, Yukako Masui, and Riku Miyazaki, all from Tsukamoto Laboratory. The six joined the satoyama revitalization activities, which Tsukamoto has been working on since 2019 as one of the directors of the general incorporated association “Small Earth,” and they started working as 6lines studio with the construction of “Tiny House TEKITEKI-AN.”
Nihonbashi/Bakurocho Area
Born in Chiba Prefecture. Completed MFA in Fine Arts at Tokyo University of the Arts in 2009. Creates collages and oil paintings that combine figures cut out from Western masterpieces with contemporary landscapes, such as in the Time Leap Series. Recent solo exhibitions include Walking through Nakanoshima (YOD Gallery, Osaka, 2022) and Landscape (Oakwood Apartments Roppongi Central, Tokyo, 2020). Selected for the WATOWA ART AWARD (2021), Shell Art Award (2020), and the 15th TAGBOAT AWARD (2020).
Nihonbashi/Bakurocho Area
They create kinetic works that recreate small, everyday occurrences through simple phenomena, as well as works that gently resonate through a method of storytelling born from the encounters between materials and motifs.
Their major solo exhibitions include Iwatake Rie + Kataoka Junya, and the Museum Collection: An Illustrated Guide for Gravity and Materials (The Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama, Kamakura Annex, 2025) and Big Two-Hearted River (3331 Arts Chiyoda, 2019). They have also participated in group exhibitions such as MOT Collection 30th Anniversary Exhibit: Nine Profiles: 1935→2025 (Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, 2025), Setouchi Triennale 2022, and BankART Bank Under 35 (BankART Studio NYK, Kanagawa, 2017).
Nihonbashi/Bakurocho Area
Born in 1980 in Gunma Prefecture, he believes that an artist should embody freedom and continues to create ambitiously across various media, including sculpture and painting, installation, video, performance, film, and workshops, without limiting himself to any specific style or mode of expression.
Nihonbashi/Bakurocho Area
Milk Souko The Coconuts is a collective of six artists: Naotaka Miyazaki, Naoki Matsumoto, Takuma Nishihama, Zenichi Tanakamaru, Ari Ookubo, and Hiroaki Takiguchi. Founded in 2009 as “Milk Warehouse,” the group evolved into “mirukusouko (Milk Warehouse) + The Coconuts,” and, with the addition of Ookubo in 2024, adopted its current name in 2025. Through bricolage-based modes of practice, the collective reconsiders the relationships between material and the body, as well as between consciousness and infrastructure. Major exhibitions include ‘Aichi Triennale 2022’ at Aichi Arts Center and ‘Plans for TOKYO 2019’ at gallery αM.
Nihonbashi/Bakurocho Area
In 2010, he held his first solo exhibition, Can’t Help Falling in Love, at the then Yamamoto Gendai. The following year, he participated in the Yokohama Triennale 2011: OUR MAGIC HOUR. In 2020, he presented a work featuring Elvis Presley reaching 4 meters tall at his first solo exhibition in ten years, Ba de ya (PARCEL, Tokyo). In 2022, he participated with a solo exhibition in the Asia Focus section of Frieze Seoul, hosted by PARCEL. In 2023, he took part in the NGV Triennale 2023 at the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia. In 2024, he will hold a solo exhibition at the Rokuzan Art Museum, located in the hometown of Rokuzan Ogiwara, a leading sculptor of the modern era. He is currently working on a piece exceeding 5 meters in height.
Nihonbashi/Bakurocho Area
He creates works that explore the relationship between society and the individual from perspectives of the mass and the miniature. As an early member of commandN, which planned projects such as Akihabara TV, he was involved in planning, management, and design until 2008. At the Tokyo Biennale 2020/2021, in the SOCIAL DIVE project, his work Sweet Democracy featured a model of the National Diet Building made of sugar cubes, which was exhibited alongside a workshop titled “1/2 Right to Vote,” where ants were allowed to eat the structure. Notable group exhibitions include Early 90’s Tokyo Art Squad (3331 Arts Chiyoda, 2020) and Neo Tokyo (Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney, 2001).
Nihonbashi/Bakurocho Area
Using metal, Terauchi create works in which inner images and memories are deformed and intertwined with cities, natural objects, and personal belongings through the technique of metal casting. Major solo exhibitions include The Rendezvous with the Sensation (GINZA SIX, Ginza Tsutaya Books, Tokyo, 2024), Nendo no Heya (CREATIVE HUB UENO “es,” Tokyo, 2024), and JUMBLE DIVE (Bohemian’s Guild CAGE, Tokyo, 2023). Group exhibitions include the 71st Graduation Works Exhibition of Tokyo University of the Arts (The University Art Museum, Tokyo University of the Arts, 2023; Purchase Selection).
Nihonbashi/Bakurocho Area
Born 1981 in Tokyo, Japan, Shoko Toda completed her master’s degree at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 2006. She creates works based on the relationship between the body and landscape, using a method that combines video, sculpture, and drawing. Recently, she has been thinking about the flexible and interchangeable nature of existence that stretches and shrinks, appears and disappears. Solo exhibitions include Flowers, Horses, Conversation (Art Center Ongoing, Tokyo, 2024); exhibitions include Setouchi International Art Festival (Awashima, Kagawa, 2013 and 2016).
Nihonbashi/Bakurocho Area
Photographer. Born 1958 in Rikuzentakata, Iwate. Hatakeyama is a photographer based in Tokyo whose works focus on the relationship between nature, city, and photography. He represented Japan in the 49th Venice Biennale held in 2001, and in 2012 participated in the Japanese pavillion of the Vennice Biennale International Architecture Exhibition (received Golden Lion prize). In addition, Hatakeyama received the 42nd Mainichi Art Award in 2001, as well as the Art Encouragement Prize by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in 2012. Member of Japan Art Academy.
Nihonbashi/Bakurocho Area
Etoile Kaito Living Bldg.
Born 1987 in Saitama and raised in Gunma, Japan. Graduated with a Master’s degree from the Department of Intermedia Art at Tokyo University of the Arts in 2012. At the core of Mari Katayama’s practice is living everyday within her own body, which she uses as a living sculpture, mannequin and lens through which to reflect society. The combination of Katayama’s hand-sewn objects, sculptural pieces, and photography challenges viewers to ques-tion the body and its complex relationship with the surrounding environment and society.
At the same time, Katayama initiated an activist art project called High Heel Project, which aims to create high heel shoes for prosthetics, while demanding the freedom of choice for all no matter what physical ability they have. Wearing her symbolic pair of custom-made high heels, Katayama continues to walk and speak up widely as an artist, singer, model and keynote speaker.
Nihonbashi/Bakurocho Area
Etoile Kaito Living Bldg.
Photographer, Director of the Institute of Anthropology of Art and Design at Tama Art University. Engaged in extensive activities centered on themes of the emergence of images and memory. Served as Artistic Director of the Aichi Triennale 2016 and as International Curator for the “Taiwan Route3 Art Festival,” in 2023.Recipient of the 2019 Japan Photographic Society Award for “On Landscape: The Changing Earth and Japan’s Memory” (Chuokoron-Shinsha). Author of Photography Theory (Chuokoron-Shinsha, 2022) and Hilma af Klint: The Spirituality of Color (Inscript, 2025).
Nihonbashi/Bakurocho Area
Etoile Kaito Living Bldg.
Artist, Professor at Tokyo University of the Arts (Department of Painting). Born 1963 in Odate City, Akita, Japan. In the early 1990’s, he set up guerilla art projects –THE GINBURART in Ginza and Sinjuku Shonen Art in Shinjuku’s Kabukicho district (1993). In 1997, he formed an alternative artist initiative called “commandN.” Activities of this group include the international video installation “Akihabara TV” held multiple years in 1999, 2000, and 2002. His work was displayed in the 49th Venice Biennale (2001) Japan Pavilion First & Slow exhibition.
From 2004, he founded a number of art projects including himming in Himi (Toyama Pref.) and ZERODATE in Odate (Akita Pref.) Nakamura then founded 3331 Arts Chiyoda in June 2010 as an independent and sustainable art center. With an extensive background in a variety of expressive activities, starting in summer 2020 he is taking on the challenge of developing the Tokyo Biennale, an art festival that will dig for the cultural and artistic resources underlying the city of Tokyo.
Nihonbashi/Bakurocho Area
Etoile Kaito Living Bldg.
Active since 2012, the collective consists of Sakie Takasu, Tohru Matsushita, and Taishi Nishihiro, with film director Kazunobu Harimoto joining as a visual collaborator. Centering their practice on the theme of “noise in the landscape,” they create and present works primarily in public and street settings. Their programs often involve collaborations with a wide range of artists engaged in street culture.
Nihonbashi/Bakurocho Area
Etoile Kaito Living Bldg.
Born 1963 in Shingu, Wakayama, Japan. In 1998, he published KUMANO, his first photo book, composed of sequences on the subject of visualizing points of view moving from here to there, shifting settings, and temporal change. In 2000, he won the 25th Ihei Kimura Photography Award for his photo book PILES OF TIME. Consistently making an analytic focus on the act of seeing as the basis of his work, he continues to photograph on themes that include Kumano, Mont Sainte-Victoire, Paul Cezanne’s studio, cherry trees, snow.
Major exhibitions include Photography and Painting—From Cézanne: Shibata Toshio and Suzuki Risaku (Artizon Museum, Tokyo, 2022), Stream of Consciousness (Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art, Kagawa; Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery; Tanabe City Museum of Art, Wakayama, 2015-2016), Water Mirror (Kumano Kodo Nakahechi Museum of Art, Wakayama, 2016), and Kumano, Yuki, Sakura (Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, 2007).
Nihonbashi/Bakurocho Area
Etoile Kaito Living Bldg.
Born 1967 in Saitama, Japan, Toyoshima received her MFA from Tokyo University of the Arts in 1993. By taking a critical look at institutions and systems found in everyday life and in our society, Toyoshima focuses on creating works that shed light on the patterns found in human thought. Her recent solo exhibitions include Yasuko Toyoshima: Origination Method (Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, 2023), The Capital Room: Beyond Three Dimensional Logical Pictures vol.1 Yasuko TOYOSHIMA (2015, gallery αM). Her works have been presented at many group exhibitions, including Image Narratives: Literature in Japanese Contemporary Art (The National Art Center, Tokyo, 2019).
Nihonbashi/Bakurocho Area
Etoile Kaito Living Bldg.
Elke Reinhuber is a media artist, educator and researcher, Associate Professor at the School of Creative Media (SCM), City University of Hong Kong. With her award winning and internationally presented works, she explores different modes of presentation and strategies of storytelling to emphasise the parallel existence of multiple truths of the here-and-now.
Her Alter Ego, the Urban Beautician, tries to improve neglected details in our urban environment with non-intrusive interventions in public space and performances to camera. She takes care of things no one else does. These overlooked details in urban space gain a new breath of life through performance, installations, video and photography.
Nihonbashi/Bakurocho Area
Etoile Kaito Living Bldg.
A landscape architect, artist, and placemaker based in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Malmö, Sweden. Co-founder of BY RUM SKOLE, a studio specializing in creating environments that prioritize the participation of children and young people, and founder of Byhumle, the world’s first urban hop farm.
Nihonbashi/Bakurocho Area
Etoile Kaito Living Bldg.
Camila Svenson is a Brazilian queer interdisciplinary artist and photographer based in São Paulo. Her research focuses on the relationship between people, memories, and places, and how these elements transform over time. Her work often involves participatory methods that include others in the creative process, exploring how encounters happen and how they are changed when mediated by a camera. In her practice, Camila collects objects, stories, events, ghosts, and images, and she is interested in living with these collections to observe how they evolve and intermingle over the years.
Nihonbashi/Bakurocho Area
Etoile Kaito Living Bldg.
Mariam Tovmasian is an Armenian visual artist and illustrator with a deep love for visual storytelling. She is excited by the infinite possibilities of telling a story through the interplay of images and words, and this passion drives her to explore the limitations of both the medium and her own creative practice. The themes in Mariam’s work often seek to answer personal or existential questions that arise from her lived experiences. Her practice is marked by a juxtaposition of grand ideas with the everyday realities of a young woman’s life—resulting in satirical, and at times poetic, visual narratives.
Nihonbashi/Bakurocho Area
Etoile Kaito Living Bldg.
Nalaka Wijewardhane is a Sri Lankan filmmaker, visual artist, and academic whose work explores postcolonial memory, representation, and the sensory power of moving images. A lecturer at the University of Colombo and a doctoral researcher, his focus on colonial-era ethnographic films informs his practice. Nalaka’s poetic, experimental works combine archival footage, soundscapes, and non-linear narratives to challenge inherited gazes and evoke unseen histories. Rooted in South Asian and Buddhist contexts, his films and installations investigate how cultural identities are constructed and mediated, offering new ways of seeing, remembering, and imagining the past.
Nihonbashi/Bakurocho Area
Etoile Kaito Living Bldg.
Born in Tokyo, raised in numerous countries such as Hong Kong, UK and USA, Juri Akiyama’s art practice is based around her philosophical exploration on the concept of “mottai (勿体)”. She uses beeswax as her main material, from whose rich historical, cultural and philosophical background she selects various motifs and topics to combine with the thoughts constructed around mottai to engage in the installations, paintings, objects as well as the circulation within her own production process, that express relationship between appearance, body/material, language and practice. She has received her BFA from the painting department of Rhode Island School of Design with Florence Leif Scholarship Award, her MFA from the department of Global Art Practice of Tokyo University of the Arts. Her recent exhibition includes: “The Apparition from the Irreducible Distance” (2025, MORI YU GALLERY, Kyoto), “The Aftermath of Light” (2025, SPROUT CURATION, Tokyo).
Kanda/Akihabara Area
Kakuchi Konpo
Tenthaus Art Collective is an Oslo-based artist collective that has been working together in various constellations since 2009. Their art practice emphasizes process, focusing on community engagement, collectivity, and inclusivity.
Presentated by Tenthaus, the OVEN Network is a transnational network for artistic exchange. Rooted in collaboration the Oven brings together collectives across Southeast Asia and the Nordics to foster shared learning co-thinking and long-term engagement. We view art and design not as outcomes but as tools for observation friction and transformation.
It takes shape through art projects exhibitions research residencies workshops publications gatherings and moments of exchange adapting to the context around it. We welcome those with a shared curiosity to think collectively hold space for difference and explore new ways of moving forward.
Members:
Ida Uvaas
A movement artist exploring mobility across body, mind, and society. Through interdisciplinary, participatory works, she challenges structures and invites collective experiences across performance, visual art, and site-specific practices. @idauvaas
Shahrzad Malekian
An interdisciplinary artist working across performance, video, and sculpture, they use play to explore power, resistance, and care within public spaces and institutions. Recent exhibitions include SACO Biennial (2025) and Singapore Art Museum (2024). @shahrzad.malekian
Studio150
A Bangkok-based studio founded by Pat Laddaphan and Piyakorn Chaiverapundech, working across art, design, and publishing. Combining graphic design and curatorial approaches, they create socially engaged projects. The studio also co-found Bangkok Art Book Fair. www.studio150.info
Mechu Rapela
Curating porous structures for dialogue that bridge communities through art, care, and emergent forms of shared knowledge.
Kanda/Akihabara Area
Ebihara Shoten
Tenthaus Art Collective is an Oslo-based artist collective that has been working together in various constellations since 2009. Their art practice emphasizes process, focusing on community engagement, collectivity, and inclusivity.
Presentated by Tenthaus, the OVEN Network is a transnational network for artistic exchange. Rooted in collaboration the Oven brings together collectives across Southeast Asia and the Nordics to foster shared learning co-thinking and long-term engagement. We view art and design not as outcomes but as tools for observation friction and transformation.
It takes shape through art projects exhibitions research residencies workshops publications gatherings and moments of exchange adapting to the context around it. We welcome those with a shared curiosity to think collectively hold space for difference and explore new ways of moving forward.
Members:
Ida Uvaas
A movement artist exploring mobility across body, mind, and society. Through interdisciplinary, participatory works, she challenges structures and invites collective experiences across performance, visual art, and site-specific practices. @idauvaas
Shahrzad Malekian
An interdisciplinary artist working across performance, video, and sculpture, they use play to explore power, resistance, and care within public spaces and institutions. Recent exhibitions include SACO Biennial (2025) and Singapore Art Museum (2024). @shahrzad.malekian
Studio150
A Bangkok-based studio founded by Pat Laddaphan and Piyakorn Chaiverapundech, working across art, design, and publishing. Combining graphic design and curatorial approaches, they create socially engaged projects. The studio also co-found Bangkok Art Book Fair. www.studio150.info
Mechu Rapela
Curating porous structures for dialogue that bridge communities through art, care, and emergent forms of shared knowledge.
Kanda/Akihabara Area
Ebihara Shoten
Born in 2000.Graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts, Department of Painting in 2025.
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