Fast becoming an essential annual fixture on Japan’s arts calendar, Art Week Tokyo (AWT) is returning this year from November 5 to 9. Aiming to showcase the creativity and diversity of the capital’s contemporary art scene, Art Week Tokyo unites more than 50 of the city’s major museums, commercial galleries and independent art spaces via the free AWT Bus system, which links all participating venues.
In addition to each venue’s exhibitions, the week features coordinated programming and special platforms, including but not limited to a special exhibition by Zurich-based guest curator Adam Symcyzk, a video program, a pop-up bar and sound installation, symposia and much more. The event is organized by Japan Contemporary Art Platform in collaboration with Art Basel, with support from Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs.
Admission to all participating galleries is free, while admission to museums is ticketed, although visitors can enjoy discounted prices upon presentation of their Art Week Tokyo wristband. The wristbands are available for free at any AWT Bus stop or at information desks at the museums.
Whether you’re a visiting art lover or a regular at Tokyo’s cultural institutions, it’s a great opportunity to get a glimpse into the city’s vast art ecosystem — read on for our recommendations on what to see.
List of Contents:
‘What Is Real?’, Okura Museum of Art (Toranomon)
AWT Bar, Emergence Aoyama Complex (Minami-Aoyama)
‘Prism of the Real: Making Art in Japan 1989-2010,’ The National Art Center, Tokyo (Roppongi)
‘Aki Sasamoto’s Life Laboratory’, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (Kiyosumi-Shirakawa)
Tokihiro Sato: ‘Photo-Respiration – City Scape’, Poetic Scape (Nakameguro)
Moon Kyungwon & Jeong Joonho: ‘News from Nowhere – Laboratory of Spring and Autumn Collection’, SCAI The Bathhouse (Nezu)
Rikako Kawauchi: ‘Humans and Tigers’, Waitingroom (Edogawabashi)
Group Exhibition ‘The Clearing’: Artists from the African Diaspora, Space Un Tokyo (Minami-Aoyama)
Samiro Yunoki: ‘The Eternal Now’, Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery (Hatsudai)
Eiki Mori: ‘Moonbow Flags’, Ken Nakahashi (Shinjuku)
Hung Tien Phan: ‘Full of Debt’, Misako & Rosen (Otsuka)
Chim↑Pom from Smappa!Group: ‘A Hole in a Hole in a Hole’, Anomaly (Tennoz)
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okura museum of art
‘What Is Real?’ at Okura Museum of Art (Toranomon)
Curated by renowned art critic Adam Szymczyk, “What Is Real?” is this year’s AWT Focus exhibition, Art Week Tokyo’s centerpiece special platform. The show brings together around 100 works — paintings, sculptures and videos — by over 50 international artists.
The show revisits pre-digital imagery of the 20th and early 21st centuries, charting the evolving way in which artists have responded to the human experience — and asking how we’ll grapple with a future where technology has the power to challenge our perception of what is real and what isn’t.
Advance tickets (through November 4) are required to guarantee entry to the exhibition. General admission tickets will be sold at the door pending availability.
When: November 5 – 9
Where: Okura Museum of Art (Google Maps)
© Kazuo Matsuzawa Office
AWT Bar, Emergence Aoyama Complex (Minami-Aoyama)
The AWT Bar, a pop-up establishment in Minami-Aoyama, will serve as a gathering place for art enthusiasts from around the world. The space itself is an art experience, designed by architect Kazuo Matsuzawa. So is the food — guests can indulge in limited-edition food by Shinobu Namae, the executive chef of the three-Michelin-star restaurant L’Effervescence, and enjoy cocktails created in collaboration with three different artists.
Beyond the visual and culinary arts, the bar will host both a permanent sound installation by Koshiro Hino and multiple live performances during the event’s run.
When: November 5 – 9
Where: Emergence Aoyama Complex (Google Maps)
NOBORU TSUBAKI, “Aesthetic Pollution”, 1990. Polyurethane, clay, wood (willow), paints, etc., 290 x 360 x 270 cm. Photo by Taku Saiki. © Noboru Tsubaki, courtesy the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa and the National Art Center, Tokyo.
‘Prism of the Real: Making Art in Japan 1989-2010,’ The National Art Center, Tokyo (Roppongi)
The National Art Center, Tokyo’s landmark exhibition “Prism of the Real” explores the period from the start of Japan’s Heisei era in 1989 to 2010. Its subject is the art created within and inspired by Japanese culture during this era of post-Cold War globalization and increased international exchange. Co-curated with M+, Hong Kong, the exhibition features the work of more than 50 artists from Japan and abroad, acting as a prism to refract the diverse social and cultural currents of the time.
The show’s main sections investigate this era through three thematic lenses: “The Past Is a Phantom,” addressing the impact of war; “Self and Others,” interrogating issues of identity and hierarchy; and “A Promise of Community,” exploring new forms of social interaction and connection.
When: September 3 – December 8
Where: The National Art Center, Tokyo (Google Maps)
AKI SASAMOTO, Still from “Point Reflection” (video), 2023. © Aki Sasamoto, courtesy Take Ninagawa and the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo.
‘Aki Sasamoto’s Life Laboratory,’ Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (Kiyosumi-Shirakawa)
This is the first mid-career retrospective for New York-based artist Aki Sasamoto, surveying two decades of her multidisciplinary work that freely crosses performance, installation and video. Sasamoto is celebrated for her improvisational performances staged within custom-built spaces that incorporate her own sculptures and devices, often using witty, personal narration to examine human behaviors.
The exhibition will be a dynamic survey of her evolution, featuring key early works, kinetic recent creations and reconstructions of her acclaimed performance/installation spaces. The artist herself will stage multiple performances of four significant pieces, including Strange Attractors and Skewed Lies, throughout the run of the show. Performances in English will be held on November 6 and 7; advance reservations are prioritized.
When: August 23 – November 24
Where: Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (Google Maps)
Tokihiro Sato, “Photo-Respiration: City Scape #22”, 1988. Archival pigment print, 130.7 x 103.5 cm. © Tokihiro Sato, courtesy Poetic Scape.
Tokihiro Sato: ‘Photo-Respiration – City Scape,’ Poetic Scape (Nakameguro)
Photographer Tokihiro Sato uses specialized techniques like pinhole cameras, the camera obscura and long exposure to explore themes of light, time, space and the body, pushing the boundaries of photographic expression. This exhibition showcases works from his signature Photo-Respiration series, focusing on the “City Scape” images created within urban and architectural environments. By tracing trails with a penlight in the dark, or reflecting sunlight with mirrors, Sato crafts tangible traces of time.
When: October 27 – December 7
Where: Poetic Scape (Google Maps)
MOON KYUNGWON and JEON JOONHO, “To Build a Fire_This is me”, 2024. Black stone, stainless steel, 81 x 75 x 64 cm. Courtesy SCAI The Bathhouse.
Moon Kyungwon & Jeong Joonho: ‘News from Nowhere – Laboratory of Spring and Autumn Collection,’ SCAI The Bathhouse (Nezu)
Korean artist duo Moon Kyungwon & Jeon Joonho are presenting their multidisciplinary project, “News from Nowhere,” across two concurrent exhibitions at SCAI The Bathhouse and SCAI Piramide. The shows center on the new moving image installation, Phantom Garden (2024-2025), which explores a “critical dystopia” where the seasons of spring and autumn have disappeared. Visitors will also see paintings by Moon, sculptures by Jeon and the cast aluminum installation Prosperos Botanica (2025).
SCAI The Bathhouse was founded in 1993 in a 200-year-old former public bathhouse building in the old Tokyo district of Yanaka, as a gallery space representing artists across generations and practices.
When: November 5 – January 31
Where: SCAI The Bathhouse (Google Maps)
RIKAKO KAWAUCHI, “Time to feed the milk, time to become a tiger”, 2023. Oil on canvas, 130.3 x 162 cm. © Rikako Kawauchi, courtesy the artist and Waitingroom.
Rikako Kawauchi: ‘Humans and Tigers,’ Waitingroom (Edogawabashi)
Rikako Kawauchi’s artistic inquiry often centers on the body, viewed through themes of food and eating. Drawing upon South American and African myths as metaphors, she explores binaries such as body and mind, self and other. Working across diverse media — including painting, drawing, neon and marble — Kawauchi’s practice is consistently defined by the “line,” which she uses to vividly reveal both physical and spiritual states. Her expressive brushwork captures the body’s movements and emotions with a sense of immediacy and speed.
For this specific exhibition, Kawauchi focuses on the core duality expressed in the title, presenting a new body of work that deeply investigates the complex relationship between animals and humans.
When: November 5 – December 21
Where: Waitingroom (Google Maps)
ṢỌLÁ OLÚLÒDE, “In the Secret Garden of Our Love”, 2025. Dye, indigo, batik, wax, ink, pastel and charcoal on canvas, 120 x 150 cm. © Ṣọlá Olúlòde.
Group Exhibition ‘The Clearing’: Artists from the African Diaspora, Space Un Tokyo (Minami-Aoyama)
Curated by Ekow Eshun for space Un, “The Clearing” is an exhibition of paintings by contemporary artists from the African diaspora that explores themes of kinship, connection and collective memory. Drawing inspiration from a scene in Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, in which Black townsfolk meet in a forest clearing for mutual support, the show meditates on communal gathering as an act of resistance, restoration and creation. The exhibition aims to present Black subjectivity as expansive and sovereign, and celebrate the full emotional and spiritual complexity of Black life through sanctuaries of quiet power.
The artists represented include Nengi Omuku, Sola Olulode, Okiki Akinfe, Arthur Timothy and Kwesi Botchway.
When: November 3 – December 26
Where: Space Un Tokyo (Google Maps)
SAMIRO YUNOKI, “Sunlight Through Trees”, 2019. Collection of the Matsumoto City Museum of Art. Courtesy Gallery Tom.
Samiro Yunoki: ‘The Eternal Now,’ Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery (Hatsudai)
This exhibition offers a comprehensive look at the creative output of the textile artist Samiro Yunoki, who passed away in 2024 at the age of 101. Over the course of his life, Yunoki built a unique body of work distinguished by vibrant colors and humorous forms that bridged both Japanese folk traditions and Modernism. The show reflects on his remarkable 75-year career, spanning various genres including dyeing, illustration and collage, and invites visitors on a journey through the cities and regions that influenced his life and work.
When: October 24 – December 21
Where: Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery (Google Maps)
EIKI MORI, “Untitled” from Moonbow Flags, 2025. C-print, 21 x 32 cm. © Eiki Mori, courtesy the artist and Ken Nakahashi.
Eiki Mori: ‘Moonbow Flags,’ Ken Nakahashi (Shinjuku)
Mori’s new series, “Moonbow Flags,” is his first solo exhibition in two years, featuring 24 unique photograms that layer negative film portraits with hand-drawn, white geometric shapes inspired by flags and everyday patterns. Mori aims to deconstruct the symbolic authority of existing flags and introduce new perspectives by fusing them with personal and playful elements. “This [deconstruction] exposes a nameless something, previously unworthy of respect, which quietly and forcefully flutters within everyday life and emotion,” Mori said in a press statement.
When: October 10 – December 20
Where: Ken Nakahashi (Google Maps)
PHUNG-TIEN PHAN, “Volkswagen 6”, 2025. Sculpture, wood, lacquer, miniature furniture, coffee machine, kitchen towel, glass, bulb, rice, incense sticks, live flowers, 97 x 42 x 42 cm. Courtesy Misako & Rosen.
Hung Tien Phan: ‘Full of Debt,’ Misako & Rosen (Otsuka)
Vietnamese-German artist Phung-Tien Phan, known for her sculptures and video works that incorporate everyday objects and cultural icons, is holding her first solo exhibition in Japan. Her art is characterized by a charming lo-fi sensibility and satirical humor, lending a light touch to explorations of profound, universal themes such as gender stereotypes, diasporic family history, generational memory, youth and the nature of labor in art.
When: October 18 – November 16
Where: Misako & Rosen (Google Maps)
*During Art Week Tokyo, the gallery will open from 10 a.m.
CHIM↑POM, “Build-Burger”, 2016. 3 floors, office supplies, air conditioner, furniture, carpet, mixed media. Courtesy the artist and Anomaly.
Chim↑Pom from Smappa!Group: ‘A Hole in a Hole in a Hole,’ Anomaly (Tennoz)
Chim↑Pom from Smappa!Group’s “A Hole within a Hole within a Hole” extends the collective’s practice of intervening in societal issues with both urgency and humor. The exhibition revolves around the concept of the “hole”— ranging from urban infrastructure like manholes to macroscopic space debris — as a multilayered metaphor for wreckage, absence and invisibility, prompting a critical re-examination of things society tries to discard or forget. By spotlighting these unseen domains, Chim↑Pom challenges conventional urban order and space.
The artist collective Chim↑Pom was established in Tokyo in 2005, and consists of Ryuta Ushiro, Yasutaka Hayashi, Ellie, Masataka Okada and Toshinori Mizuno.
When: October 11 – November 9
Where: Anomaly (Google Maps)
More Information
For more information and updates, head to Art Week Tokyo’s website or Instagram.
Read about special admission rates for participating museums here, and check out the AWT Bus map here.
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