Mariko ARAI lives in Tokyo, where she was born in 1993. She received her MFA from Tokyo University of the Arts, Graduate School of Fine Arts. With preexisting social structures or folklore as her subjects, she creates installation pieces that use stuffed animals or dolls to explore the fundamental behaviors and desires of modern humans.

Select Exhibitions:
2023 Solo Project Exhibition, “ Teikō to Juyō no Pakkēji [Package of resistance and acceptance]”, Nishiaizu Junior High School, Fukushima, Japan
2023 Group Exhibition, “Identified – Relative ‘X’ / Absolute ‘X’”, COURTYARD HIROO, Tokyo, Japan
2022 Group Show of Contemporary Artists 2022, “The art of leaving things behind”, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan

Select Awards:
2021 Metro Cultural Foundation Prize
2017 Heisei Art Award

Comment on the exhibition:
I am both surprised and grateful to be focusing on topics that would have been difficult to broach in other competitions. I plan to make the most of this opportunity, working hard on my art so I can show more people what, at this stage, I’m able to do, concerned with, and want to convey.

Umi IWASE was born in Mie Prefecture in 1998. They received their MFA in 2023 from Akita University of Art, Graduate School of Transdisciplinary Arts. Their astrological sign is Cancer. They have four older sisters and one younger sister. They create sculptures primarily on focused on gender and sexuality. They are concerned with the socially marginalized, and the violence that these groups face.

Select Exhibitions:
2024 “Being and Belonging”, The side, Kyoto, Japan
2023 “When we talk about us,”, Akita City Cultural Creation Center, Akita, Japan
2022 “What to talk about when we talk about us”, BIYONG POINT, Akita, Japan

Select Awards:
2023 Akita University of Art Graduation Exhibition Transdisciplinary Arts Award
2022 Kuma Foundation Scholarship 6th Term Selection
2022 ARTISTS’ FAIR KYOTO 2022 Mynavi ART AWARD Runner-up

Comment on the exhibition:
I have started a small vegetable garden. On my way to Tokyo from Akita I think, “I have to make sure to water it.”
The plants were grown from seed and are still small; they’ll quickly wither without enough water. I will be leaving home for a few days to participate in this exhibition, and a friend who lives nearby will water them for me. I hope the start of the exhibition brings a big harvest.

Hinako MIYABAYASHI was born in Hokkaido in 1997 and currently lives in Tokyo. She graduated from Tama Art University, Faculty of Art and Design, Department of Painting as an Oil Painting major in 2021. In 2023 she graduated from Berlin University of the Arts (UdK Berlin), College of Fine Arts, completing her Meisterschülerstudium with Thilo Heinzmann. She is currently enrolled in Tokyo University of the Arts, Graduate School of Fine Arts as a master’s student in Painting.
She primarily creates paintings, drawings, collages, and lithographs, emphasizing repeated dialogues with place and material, with a focus on the relationship between “painting” and “being painted.”

Select Exhibitions:
2024 “project N 93 Hinako Miyabayashi”, Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
2024 “Hidden Letters in the Earth”, Gallery 38, Tokyo, Japan
2023 “Hinako Miyabayashi”,  Galerie Bernd Kugler, Innsbruck, Austria

Select Awards:
2021 Art Award Tokyo Marunouchi 2021 Akira Tatehata Prize
2021 Tama Art University Graduation Exhibition Ichiro Fukuzawa Prize

Comment on the exhibition:
When matter becomes space. The materials—coarsely woven cloth or fine cotton, pigments or oils—appear, through my hand, as an expanse accompanied by gesture and expression. I want to explore the potential of painting.

Shota SHIMURA was born in 1993 in Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture. His family ran a dry cleaners. After traveling the world and engaging in business development, he enrolled in the master’s program at IAMAS (Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences). He began his Mobile Literature series after moving to Gifu Prefecture’s Ogaki, the city with which poet Matsu BASHO concluded his Oku no Hosomichi (a major text of Japanese classical literature often translated as The Narrow Road to the Deep North or The Narrow Road to the Interior). Following Basho, he aims to present this work in cities all over the world.

Select Exhibitions/Projects:
2023 Roppongi Art Night 2023, “Urban Life Encyclopedia”, Roppongi Hills Arena, Roppongi, Tokyo, Japan
2021 Solo Exhibition, “Amusement glimmer” (as part of the duo “Weltreisende” with Daigo Sakane), koukagarou, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan
2020 “Sanpo suru bungaku-shō [Walking literary award]”, Organizer

Comment on the exhibition:
Even on lonely nights, fettered by despair—even on lusterless mornings, enthralled by resignation—writing is the one thing I have never stopped doing. It is my mission, my destiny, my calling—this was true ten years ago, true the day before yesterday, true yesterday, true today. And so it will continue to be true tomorrow, true the day after tomorrow, true at the hour of my death. I would like to create a work that will be the masterpiece of the Shota SHIMURA of today; to place a bookmark in the journey that has fiercely marked my soul. Sending love to all who come and see the exhibition!

Yuichi SHIROMA was born in Saitama Prefecture in 1998. He is currently enrolled in Tokyo University of the Arts, Graduate School of Fine Arts as a master’s student in Oil Painting. He is mainly based in Ibaraki Prefecture.

Select Exhibitions:
2024 “Chii to renzu [Earth and lens]”, Empathy Gallery, Tokyo, Japan

Select Awards:
2022 WATOWA ART AWARD 2022
2019 Shell Art Award 2019 Selection
2017 27th All Japan Art Salon Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Award

Comment on the exhibition:
I am very grateful to be able to participate in this exhibition. It’s difficult to find a space to display works of the size I’ll be showing, so I’m really happy to be given an opportunity like this, to have this exhibition and to show my art to people. I am also looking forward seeing the works of the other artists. I hope a lot of different people will come to see us.

Yasutaka YANO was born in Chiba in 2000. He majored in Painting at Tama Art University and began working a full time job after graduating in 2023. He is currently based in Chiba. He primarily paints his own attributes, his body, and objects he has encountered, and puts words related to them into the text-based format of flashcards. He also creates the spaces in which these works are exhibited, structuring and presenting them as if the exhibition were the artwork’s final form.

Select Exhibitions:
2023 “Ongoing Fes 2023: Art Fair Ongoing”, Art Center Ongoing, Kichijoji, Tokyo, Japan
2023 “GREEN SCREEN”, Penguin’s House Green, Sagamihara, Japan
2022 “Luminous”, Tama Art University, East Building, 402 Gallery, Hachioji, Japan

Select Awards:
2023 58th Kanagawa Art Exhibition Selection

Comment on the exhibition:
It is almost impossible for me to continue to create art while I’m working, and when I applied for this open call, I was barely able to paint anything at all. Additionally, I found it extremely difficult to have to determine, even tentatively, the meaning of my artwork, or who I am as an artist, both of which are usually left extremely vague and indefinite. However, I am thrilled to ultimately be able to participate in this group exhibition. I want to make good works; I want it to be a good exhibition.