Aichi Triennale 2025 Highlights: 10 Excellent Works of Art

Aichi Triennale is one of Japan’s rising international art festivals, launching its sixth iteration last weekend. This year’s festival is titled “Time Between Ashes and Roses” and is led by Hoor Al Qasami, president and director of the Sharjah Art Foundation. Triennale will last until November 30 and brings together over 60 artists and groups from 22 countries and territories, as well as artwork, performances and study programs introduced at various locations in the cities of Nagoya and Seto.

The titular phrase “Time between Ashes and Rose” quotes the verse of the Syrian poet Adonis, whose Hope After War inspired Al Qasami. The triennium attempts to visualize and explore our relationship with the environment through a geological perspective and capture the subtle scope between destruction and renewal.

In this overarching theme, promoting priorities for non-Western voices from around the world highlights unique histories, cultural identities and life experiences from the Middle East, Africa, Africa, Latin America and Asia.

“question [of colonialism and ecological crisis] What has happened to her generations in many Aboriginal communities today, and what has happened to her generations,” she said in a press conference for the festival’s opening ceremony. “I hope we can find some solidarity and connection through this exhibition. ”

Seto City is one of Japan’s “six ancient kilns” and is one of the main sites for installations, all of which are carried out on unlikely sites such as an abandoned primary school and an old public bathroom. Other major venues include the Aichi Art Center in downtown Nagoya, and the Aichi Ceramic Museum where Aichi is scattered in Seto City.

Keep reading to discover this year’s unforgettable highlights.

“Unforgettable Residue” (2025), Rui Sasaki

Undoubtedly, one of the most breathtaking works of the year is the otherworldly installation of glass artist Rui Sasaki, “Unforgettable Remnants” (2025), located in an old public bathroom. Sasaki worked with Seto locals to select various plants from the area, pressing them between the glass plates that were then shot. These ethereal pieces descend from the ceiling and inject the bathroom with a haunting but strange cozy glow into the black wall coco of the bathroom. Like many of her works, this work evokes what the artist calls “a subtle intimacy” (a sense of nostalgia and resonance) in an unfamiliar space.

Installation view of Achi Triennale 2025. ElenaDamiani “Easy III” (2025) Photo: Ito Tetsuo.

“REREF III” (2025), Elena Damyani

Peruvian artist Elena Damiani’s work “Relief III” (2025) is part of her prototype “Rescue” series, which explores the evolution of the ground over hundreds of years. Triennale’s device uses Loess, a native material containing Gairome clay that has long supported Seto’s ceramic industry – silica sand and iron oxide. Damiani shows the rhythmic paths (geometric objects) left by “peridot” (a geometric object made of Onyx Gemstones), giving physical forms the immensity of the geological age, far exceeding human activities. The work is on display at the Aichi County Ceramic Museum.

Wangechi Mutu, “Sleeping Snake” (2014). Courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro London.

“Sleeping Snake” (2014-2025), wangechi mutu

Also on display at the AICHI County Ceramic Museum are several incredible works by Kenyan artist Wangechi Mutu from New York and Nairobi. Mutu’s work is in line with the core principles of conception – how we represent what we perceive, especially with the female body.

“Sleeping Serpent” (2014-2025) is a long serpentine form with a raised body and a carved ceramic face that sits on a pillow. The miscellaneous wax drops around the still head are called “dreams” and they grow in quantity every time the sculpture is displayed. Mutu explains that the number is a self-portrait, representing the way she is consumed by the “mountains of magazines and paper” used by the collage.

Simone Leigh, “Untitled” (2023-24) ©Simone Leigh, courtesy of artist and Matthew Marks Gallery.

“Untitled” (2023-2024), Simone Leigh

The work of New York-based multimedia artist Simone Leigh (she described it as an automated magazine) often utilizes forms related to African art to explore the aesthetics of the entire African diaspora and the real reality of black women. The work is on display at the Aichi County Ceramic Museum and consists of a skirt of shells wrapped around clay figures. The use of shells is symbolic for two reasons: They are used as divination by the Yoruba people in West Africa, but also represent the trauma and exploitation of transatlantic slavery, and are one of the oldest currencies in the world.

Featured works by Izumi Kato

The Aichi Ceramic Museum’s “Design Aichi” gallery is dedicated primarily to the paintings and sculptures of famous Japanese artist Izumi Kato, drawn from primitive life forms, marine life, Flora, Flora and Fauna. The mysterious creatures he summoned were immediately organic and strange, evoking a tangible world observed through a microscope and a mysterious spiritual world. Kato’s visual references to marine life have accumulated since childhood, as he grew up on the seaside of Shimane County.

Featured works by Yuriko Asano

Among the numerous artworks at the Aichi Art Center are botanical illustrations by Yuriko Asano and painted ceramic plates that reflect on the symbiosis between humans and nature. For the Triennial, Asano focuses on the relationship between vegetation and pottery making in the Seto area, turning the plants she encountered while walking in Seto into patterns decorating large glaze panels.

“Twisted Garden” (2021) and “Resting Medicine” (2020), made of Washi paper, oil, water-dried pigments and mineral pigments, make the plant unique and aesthetically very careful, resulting in imperfect harmonious ingredients. The three-panel oil painting “Eating Horse Rib” (2014) captures the generational wisdom of a food culture with amazing mobility and vitality.

Mohammed Kazem, “Photo of the Flag” (1997-2003). Courtesy of Dubai-based artist and gallery Isabelle.

“Photo of the Flag” (1997-2003), Mohammed Kazem

Mohammed Kazem was born and based on Dubai, addressing the loss of cultural identity and rapid modernization through meditation on space and time. Kazem’s video, photography and performance media often feature the artist himself. The series “Photos with the Flag” (1997-2003) is a poignant example of this practice, which uses Kazem as rückenfigur (“the figure behind” simultaneously invites and isolates the audience), staring at the desert and sea views. As a witness to the loneliness of these sites on the edge of development, Kazem suspended the timely transfer of the landscape. “Photoes with flags” can be found at the Aichi Arts Centre.

“Sky Revolution” (2023), Bassim al Shaker

One of the gallery spaces at the Art Center is the heartbreaking beautiful canvas of Iraqi artist Bassim Al Shaker, The Sky Revolution (2023) and the new works “Sky Fable” and “Rebirth”. The former was seen after the explosion during the Iraq War in 2003, Al Shaker was designed to evoke simultaneous catastrophic rupture and frozen sky silence during aerial bombardment.

Bassim Al Shaker, “The Sky Revolution” (2023). Provided by the artist.

“These paintings have nothing to do with death. They have nothing to do with bombs. They are bombs.” “Each painting is a new beginning. There is death, but I have a new life. I am still alive.” The poetic painting embodies the theme of the triennial ashes and roses, depicting vibrant pigments even in destruction.

Ohkojima Maki, “Grain of Tomorrow” (2017-18) ©Maki Ohkojima and Agros Art Project All rights reserved and stored in the Aomori Museum of Art. Photo: Mari Habaya.

“Tomorrow’s Harvest” (2017-2018), Maki Ohkojima

See Maki Ohkojima’s massive paintings – a kale tapestries of earthly and mythical creatures, landscapes and symbols mixed in planetary harmony – is a border spiritual experience in one of the largest gallery spaces in the Aichi Art Center. Ohkojima is headquartered in Tokyo and has participated in India, Poland, China, Mexico, France and more. In her work, she ponders the complex process of life and death, partly because of her observations of marine ecosystems in the 2017 Tara Pacific Research project.

“Between Trends and Bloom” (2019), Mulina

Indonesian artist Mulyana presents one of the most complex, lush and charming installations of the festival, carefully woven from recyclable yarns. Mulyana started weaving while working part-time at a bookstore in Bandung, Indonesia, and he built these vivid, massive marine environments to meet the country’s environmental restoration needs. His craft is simply spectacular, capturing the fantastic forms of life in the ocean – the genre of fish, the undulating coral reefs, Downy Moss, with playful whimsicality.

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