Momoko Seto (b. 1980) is a Paris-based filmmaker and media artist whose practice explores ecological and environmental themes through highly innovative visual techniques. Her work employs macro lenses, slow motion, and time-lapse photography to craft otherworldly perspectives on planetary life cycles and the after-effects of climate change. Seto's moving image works offer immersive visual experiences that pull the viewer deep into molecular worlds, revealing microbial dramas that evoke vast cosmic scales. Her films serve as both a meditation and a warning, prompting viewers to contemplate the future of Earth and the interconnectedness of all living beings. Her work has been widely shown at international film festivals and has garnered numerous awards.

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Chim↑Pom from Smappa!Group is a Tokyo-based artist collective formed in 2005, comprising Ushiro Ryuta, Hayashi Yasutaka, Ellie, Okada Masataka, Inaoka Motomu, and Mizuno Toshinori. Their politically charged and socially engaged practice spans performance, installation, video, and site-specific interventions. They gained international acclaim for Don’t Follow the Wind (2015–), an ongoing exhibition within the Fukushima exclusion zone that remains inaccessible until radiation levels subside. Chim↑Pom opened the artist-run space “Garter” in Koenji, Tokyo, in 2015, and have held major solo shows including Non-Burnable (Dallas Contemporary, 2017) and Threat of Peace (Hiroshima!!!!!!) (Art in General, New York, 2019). Group exhibitions include the 29th São Paulo Biennial (2010), Global(e) Resistance at Centre Pompidou (2020), and HERE AND NOW at Museum Ludwig (2021–22). In 2015, they received the Best Emerging Artist Award at the Prudential Eye Awards.

Koki Tanaka’s practice spans video, photography, installations, and interventions in which he renders visible the multiple contexts intrinsic to everyday acts. In his earlier works, Tanaka experimented with ordinary objects to explore possible diversions from daily routines. In his more recent work, Tanaka asks participants to collectively navigate tasks that are in and of themselves out of the ordinary. He documents behaviours that people unconsciously exhibit when facing unusual situations, exploring group dynamics in a micro-society and transitory community. His works have been exhibited internationally, including at the Migros Museum, Zurich (2018); Kunsthaus Graz (2017); Skulptur Projekte Münster (2017); the 57th Venice Biennale (2017); the Liverpool Biennial (2016); VanAbbe Museum, Eindhoven (2014); the 55th Venice Biennale (2013); and at the Gwangju Biennial (2008). He received a special mention for his national participation at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013, and was Deutsche Bank's "Artist of the Year" in 2015.

Yukihiro Taguchi (b. 1980) is a Berlin-based Japanese artist known for his dynamic installations that blend drawing, performance, and stop-motion animation. Born in Osaka in 1980, Taguchi creates performative environments using everyday and found materials sourced from his immediate surroundings. His site-responsive works engage audiences through playful visual rhythm and the transformation of space over time. Each project documents not only material movement but also the temporal and bodily labour of making. His animations, constructed frame by frame in real spaces, reveal a humorous yet critical engagement with urban life, temporality, and impermanence. Taguchi’s practice exists at the intersection of animation and choreography, often unfolding in public spaces and artist residencies across Europe and Asia. His work invites audiences to rediscover the extraordinary within the ordinary and the performative potential of domestic and civic environments.

Hiraki Sawa (b.1977) is a London-based Japanese artist whose surreal moving-image works explore memory, displacement, and the psychological dimensions of place. Born in 1977, Sawa creates videos in which domestic spaces open up to dreamlike, imaginary realms populated by miniature figures, animals, and objects that shift fluidly between the mundane and the fantastical. His practice reflects on the instability of time and space, often exploring what it means to be ‘in-between’—between cultures, homes, or worlds. Sawa studied at the University of East London and earned an MFA from the Slade School of Art. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Biennale de Lyon (2003, 2013), Biennale of Sydney (2010), Busan Biennale (2008), and Yokohama Triennale (2005), and is held in collections such as the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa; and Hayward Gallery, London.

Mako Idemitsu (b. 1940) is a pioneering video artist whose feminist practice interrogates the role of women in postwar Japanese society. Born in Tokyo in 1940, Idemitsu studied at Waseda University and later at Columbia University, New York. Her time in the United States (1963–1975) was shaped by encounters with Jungian psychology and the feminist movement, both of which deeply influenced her work. Idemitsu's signature video-dramas subvert the aesthetics of Japanese television melodrama to critique patriarchal family structures and explore the psychological complexities of women’s interior lives. Her layered narratives often blur fiction and autobiography, operating as visual essays on domesticity, gender, and social constraint. Her work has been widely exhibited at institutions and festivals including Documenta 8, Centre Pompidou, MoMA New York, the Venice Biennale, and the National Museum of Art, Osaka. Her works are held in numerous public collections in Japan and internationally. Idemitsu continues to live and work in Tokyo.

Chikako Yamashiro (b. 1976) is an Okinawa-based artist whose video and performance practice examines the entanglement of identity, memory, and geopolitics in East Asia. Born in Okinawa in 1976, Yamashiro draws from the island’s complex history as both a site of trauma and resistance. Her works foreground marginalised voices, navigating the borderlands between life and death, memory and the body. Often working with performance and voice, she uses moving image to destabilise documentary realism and open multiple interpretations between the image and viewer. Techniques such as found footage, layered sound, and multi-channel installations further her interest in the metabolism of memory. Recent presentations include Image Narrative, Literature in Japanese Contemporary Art at The National Art Center, Tokyo (2019) and Mud Man at Kyoto Experiment (2018). Yamashiro’s work continues to challenge formal and political boundaries in contemporary Japanese art.

Futoshi Miyagi (b. 1981) is an Okinawan-born artist whose work explores love, memory, and identity through personal and historical narratives. He moved to the United States in 2001 and began developing his practice in New York, drawing on photography, video, installation, and text. Much of his work reflects on the legacy of Okinawa’s militarisation and its entanglement with gender and national belonging. His ongoing project American Boyfriend speculates on a fictional love story between an Okinawan and an American man, confronting the silences surrounding queerness, war, and desire. Through tender, research-based storytelling, Miyagi invites reflection on the complexity of intimacy and the act of remembering across cultural and temporal distances. His work spans fiction and documentary, the poetic and the political, building quiet but profound emotional landscapes.

Maiko Jinushi (b. 1984) is a Tokyo-based artist working across video, drawing, text, and performance. Born in 1984, she began her practice in literature and visual art and later in 2010 began expressing herself through moving image in 2010. Her work often takes the form of diaristic narratives, combining poetic voiceovers with intimate footage to reflect on emotional and psychological experiences of love, memory, and kinship. Jinushi also integrates installation and live performance into her presentations, creating layered encounters between language and image. She has exhibited widely in Japan and internationally. Notable solo exhibitions include A New Experience of Love (HAGIWARA PROJECTS, 2016) and Big Mouth, Small Hands or Small Mouth, Big Hands (Art Center Ongoing, 2015). Group shows include Zero Gravity (Matadero Madrid, 2015), Unusualness Makes Sense (Chiang Mai University Art Center, 2016), and Fictive Communities Asia (Koganecho Bazaar, 2014).

Tsubasa Kato (b. 1984) is a video and performance artist whose work explores themes of migration, distance, and the social consequences of globalisation. Born in 1984, he collaborates with communities across cities such as Jakarta, Mexico City, and various locations in the United States and Vietnam. His large-scale participatory projects often involve collective physical action, most notably in his ongoing “Pull and Raise” series where people come together to raise structures using ropes—a metaphor for cooperation, resistance, and reconstruction. Kato’s practice centres on visualising the invisible threads that connect places and people, inviting viewers to reflect on the frictions and solidarities born from movement and displacement. Through poetic and performative means, his work reconsiders the ways local communities adapt to and resist the impact of global forces.

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