Aya FUJIOKA solo exhibition「Forget Me Not」

Art Center BUG, operated by Recruit Holdings Co., Ltd., is pleased to present Forget Me Not, a solo show by Aya Fujioka opening on Wednesday, October 14, 2026. Recruit has supported Fujioka since early in her artistic career, selecting her to participate in 1996’s Face of Humanity Photographic Project held at Guardian Garden—an earlier iteration of Art Center BUG, and the artist’s debut exhibition— with a series of photographs from her daily life entitled Namida tsubo [Jar of tears]. This relationship continued with her selection for the 24th Hitotsubo Photography Exhibition in 2005 for Saudade, a series of photographs about her grandmother’s experiences as an immigrant in Brazil, and the exhibition of her 2017 solo show Aya, and her metaphysical study.

With Forget Me Not,the internationally active Fujioka presents a new series that has been commissioned by BUG. Nine years ago, Fujioka received a single message from a woman living in Melbourne, Australia regarding the existence of a certain Japanese woman. This launched a creative project that spans the postwar-era to the present and bridges the immense distance between Fujioka’s hometown of Kure (Hiroshima) and Australia, a project where mysteries multiply with every new discovery, and truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

Just as Saudade traced her grandmother’s footsteps through São Paulo, Comment te dire adieu recorded her own travels throughout Europe, and Life Studies was born out of the five years the artist spent living in New York, so too does this series seem to lead Fujioka on a global journey, one told from the stories interwoven through the viewfinder of her camera to produce an exhibition that marks a shifting tide in her work.

Aya FUJIOKA ／藤岡亜弥

Born in Hiroshima in 1972, and spent approximately five years in New York through the Agency for Cultural Affairs’ Program of Overseas Study for Upcoming Artists, beginning in 2007. Since 2013, Fujioka has been based in her hometown of Hiroshima. She won a number of accolades, including the Kimura Ihei Award, for Here Goes River (Akaaka Art Publishing Inc), a publication of collected photography that captures present-day Hiroshima seventy years after the end of the war. Fujioka has presented work extensively both in Japan and abroad, participating in the 2021 Countermeasures Against Awkward Discourses exhibition at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, and in group shows at SEIZAN Gallery New York in 2023 and 2024. Her work is held in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Major publications of collected photography include I don’t sleep (Akaaka Art Publishing Inc), Comment te dire adieu (Ricochet), and Life Studies (Akaaka Art Publishing Inc). In July 2026, the book and exhibition I’m So Happy You Are Here: Japanese Women Photographers from the 1950s to Now—originally published in English and French last year and having attracted 140,000 visitors at the Rencontres d’Arles international photography festival—will tour Japan in an expanded form under the title Manazashi no kiseki: Nihon josei shashinka no bōken [Miracle of the gaze: adventures of Japanese women photographers] with Fujioka added to the lineup of exhibiting artists. She is a lecturer at Kyoto University of the Arts.

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