Aichi Triennale 2025 to Imagine a World Beyond Borders
Adrián Villar Rojas, Simone Leigh, and Wangechi Mutu are among participants who will explore a future beyond the point of view of nation‑state or territory. Save to My Ocula
Sixty artists will exhibit at the sixth Aichi Triennale, one of Japan’s largest contemporary art festivals, led by curator Hoor Al Qasimi from 13 September to 30 November 2025.
Each artist was selected for their relevance to the theme A Time Between Ashes and Roses, which departs from an eponymous 1970 anthology by Syrian poet Adonis that explores the human condition in relation to love, dogma, war, and ruin.
Echoing its sentiments, the triennial will present a vision of the future that sets aside national and territorial perspectives, which are said to divide humans and the environment, and adopt an ‘in between’ space where ‘assumed social structures and hierarchies can come undone’.
Al Qasimi said she was excited to work with such a strong line up of artists, and hopes to explore the human-environment divide and uncover ‘new insights and potential solutions to our pressing crises’.
Participants include Palestinian artist duo Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, British Ghanaian filmmaker John Akomfrah, sculptor Simone Fattal, Sudanese painter Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, and Kenyan American installation artist Wangechi Mutu.
American sculptor Simone Leigh and Congolese performance artist Faustin Linyekula will be exhibiting in Japan for the first time, while Japan will be represented by figures like architect and photographer Sugimoto Hiroshi, painter and sculptor Kato Izumi, and textile artist Oki Junko.
The uniquely Japanese art form of Manga will also be represented by Morohoshi Daijiro, whose five-decade career has greatly influenced Japanese popular culture, and panpanya, an online manga artist.
Meanwhile, a rammed-earth project by Ghanaian collective Hive Earth will take place in honour of prominence of natural resources like clay in people’s lives, as noticed by Al Qasimi in research trips to host cities Nagoya and Seto City.
Al Qasimi is the founder and director at Sharjah Foundation and a member of the royal family in Sharjah. She topped Artreview‘s Power100 this year as the most influential person in the art world. —[O]
Main image: The Aichi Arts Center in Nagoya, one of the venues for Aichi Triennale.
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