Born in Okayama Prefecture in 1994. Completed a doctoral program at Kanazawa College of Art in 2024. Based in Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Okita creates paintings using urushi lacquer as her primary medium.Urushi, a natural tree sap that undergoes transformations beyond the artist’s full control, is understood in her practice as a mediator between humans and nature. Through her work, she explores relationships between human and nonhuman beings. In recent years, her interests have expanded to the interplay between the natural environment and human activity, as well as to the folklore and mythology that have emerged from these relationships.

Selected Exhibitions
2024 “Carrying the Calendar, Eating the Seeds,” Shirasagi Art, Ishikawa
2024 “Figuration ⇔ Abstraction: Moments and Conditions in Which the Figurative Becomes Abstract in Painting, and Vice Versa,” curated by Hiroki Yamamoto, ASTER Curator Museum, Ishikawa
2024 “Blessings Travel Through Wounds,” Kuma Foundation Gallery, Tokyo

Selected Awards
2026 Grand Prize, 17th I Award for Emerging Artists, Okayama Prefecture
2025 Finalist, 3rd BUG Art Award
2020 30th-term Scholarship Recipient, Sato International Cultural Scholarship Foundation
2018 Selected as a 2nd-term Kuma Foundation Scholar

Born in Hyogo Prefecture in 1993. Currently lives in Ibaraki and works between Tokyo and the Kansai region. Completed the graduate program at Kyoto University of the Arts in 2018 and at Tokyo University of the Arts in 2020. Throughout her practice, Kurashiki has consistently explored the distance between oneself and others. Her work engages with themes of community and care, ranging from broader subjects such as religion, gender, death, and the body to more intimate aspects of everyday life, including work and family. While primarily creating two-dimensional works using transfer techniques, she also develops ritualistic installations and performances centered on the act of sharing food.

Selected Exhibitions
2025 “My Grandmother Lived Alone in the House,” Live Art Gallery, Tokyo
2025 “When Your Bones Creak,” ARTDYNE, Tokyo
2024–2025 “Dancing in the Boundary,” NEWoMan Yokohama, Kanagawa
2023 “New Mutation #5: Aya Kurashiki and Ryo Nishimura: Transference of Things,” Kyoto Art Center, Kyoto

Selected Awards
2026 Honorable Mention, VOCA 2026
2025 Selected Artist, Gunma Biennale for Young Artists 2025
2024 Yuji Akimoto Award, KAIKA TOKYO AWARD 2024

Born in 1992. Completed the Printmaking program in the Graduate School of Arts at Kyoto City University of Arts in 2017.

Beginning with drawing, Fujita creates works using reproductive printing techniques such as silkscreen and inkjet printing. Through processes mediated by printing, such as converting drawings into ASCII art and printing them onto ceramics, or enlarging palm-sized drawings for output, she reconsiders the act of drawing and its relationship to the digital and the analog, as well as to time and place. She also produces and publishes artists’ books under the publishing label “pharmacy.”

Selected Solo Exhibitions
2025 “BLANK/BLANKET,” kaamer, Tokyo
2025 “BLANK/BLANKET,” shvetams, Shimane
2022 “Wind in a Virtual Body,” The Triangle, Kyoto
2021 “Hard / Soft,” I SEE ALL, Osaka
2021 “In Preparation,” Tokyo

Selected Group Exhibitions
2022 “Playground of Sensibility,” ANB Tokyo, Tokyo
2022 “Planet Samsa,” Former Odaka Bookbinding Co., Ltd., Tokyo
2022 “VOCA 2022,” The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo

Born in Hyogo Prefecture in 1986. Graduated from the Department of Design at Osaka University of Arts. Based in Osaka.

Drawing on traces and memories inscribed in the urban environment, Yoshimura works across sculpture and video to explore the transformation of “rights” and “existence” within public space. In his recent “Random Encounter” series, he collects graffiti found on Google Street View and translates low-resolution digital information into wood sculpture. Through this classical process of materialization, he examines the privatization of information and the transformation of public memory, using sculpture to reconsider the ambiguous boundaries between the two.

Selected Exhibitions
2025 “Random Encounter,” CAPSULE, Tokyo
2025 “High Tide,” Open Contemporary Art Center, Taipei
2024 “BankART Life7 UrbanNesting: Living in the City Again,” BankART Station, Kanagawa
2023 “Frieze Seoul 2023 – Focus Asia,” COEX, Seoul

Born in Osaka Prefecture in 1987. Completed a master’s degree in Art Studies at Kyoto City University of Arts. After completing a curatorial internship at The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Irizawa worked as a curator at the Asahi Group Oyamazaki Villa Museum of Art (formerly the Asahi Beer Oyamazaki Villa Museum of Art) from 2015 to 2017. Since 2018, he has served as a curator at the Aichi Prefectural Ceramic Museum, specializing in contemporary ceramics.

His field of expertise is the history of modern and contemporary Japanese ceramics. In addition to approaching ceramics as an artistic practice, he curates exhibitions from an industrial and production-based perspective.

Selected Curatorial Projects
2025 “Mixed Melting: Contemporary Perspectives on Ceramics”
2024 “Touching the Bottom: Contemporary Art in Seto,” an outreach project of Aichi Triennale, co-curated with Kazuho Soeda and Namiki Serizawa
2022 “Fragments of Homo Faber”

He also participated in Aichi Triennale 2025 as a curator of contemporary art.

Born in 1989. Based in Tokyo and Kyoto. Graduated from the Industrial Art Course at Tokyo Metropolitan University. Director of Gei-to, a general incorporated association.

Viewing art as a means of living better, Aoki develops a wide range of art projects in collaboration with artists, companies, and local governments.

Selected Projects
2025– Facilitator, “APK STUDIES,” a learning program organized by TODA Corporation, TODA BUILDING
2024 Guest Curator, “SENSE ISLAND / LAND 2024,” Yokosuka
2018– Director, “Fantasia! Fantasia! – A City Shaped by Ways of Living,” Sumida, Tokyo

Selected Publications
Workshops That Reveal Who We Are, co-editor and author, Gakugei Publishing
Phantom Limb Pain Diary, author, Kawade Shobo Shinsha