AWT BAR

Kae Ito is an architect and the principal of Office Itokae, which she founded in 2025. From 2014 to 2025, Ito worked at SANAA / Kazuyo Sejima & Associates, where she was involved in commissions for Benesse Art Site Naoshima, Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai, Japan, and numerous exhibition design projects. She is currently working on architectural and interior design projects in Japan and abroad.

Natsumi Aoyagi was born in 1990 in Tokyo. Pursuing a project-based practice grounded in fieldwork and research, she explores the possibilities for time-based media through approaches including observation, documentation, narrative, and poetry. In 2022 she presented a solo exhibtion at the Towada Art Center. She has also participated in group exhibitions and events including “Bukimi no Tani (不気味の谷): The Uncanny Valley—The Affectivity of the Humanoid,” held in 2025 at multiple venues in Tokyo as part of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo’s Invocation series of satellite projects; the ICC Annual 2024, “A Very Close Distance,” at the NTT InterCommunication Center (ICC), Tokyo; and the 10th Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions, held in 2018 at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum. In 2025 Aoyagi was selected for Jump: Global Collaboration Program for Emerging Artists and Curators from Japan, for which she is producing a new work to be shown at the Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, Lisbon, in 2026. In 2023 she received the 28th Nakahara Chuya Prize for her poetry collection Sodatsu no o yameru (Done Being Nurtured). She is the founder of honkbooks.

Mariko Mori was born in Tokyo and lives and works between New York, Tokyo, and Miyako Island, Okinawa. After graduating from the Chelsea College of Art, London, in 1992, she spent the following year in the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Mori has received numerous awards, including Honorable Mention at the 47th Venice Biennale (1997) and Honorary Fellow from the University of the Arts London (2014). Her work Wave UFO (1999–2002) drew international acclaim when it was exhibited at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005. Mori has held solo exhibitions at major art museums and institutions worldwide, including the Serpentine Gallery, London (1998); Brooklyn Museum, New York (1999); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2000); Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2002); Royal Academy of Arts, London (2012); and Japan Society, New York (2013). Her works are held in important collections including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and Tate Modern, London.

Yoshihiro Suda was born in 1969 in Yamanashi and lives and works in Tokyo. He is known for making highly detailed hand-carved sculptures of flowers and plants, which he places in unexpected positions in the gallery space to create spatial installations. In 1993 Suda installed his first solo show, “Ginza Weed Theory,” in parking lots in Tokyo’s Ginza district. Since then he has held solo exhibitions at institutions including the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (1999); Art Institute of Chicago (2003); National Museum of Art, Osaka (2006); Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art (2006); Contemporary Museum, Honolulu (2009, now integrated into the Honolulu Museum of Art); Chiba City Museum of Art (2012); and Shoto Museum of Art, Tokyo (2024). Suda is the subject of a forthcoming solo exhibition at the Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, Hayama, scheduled to open in March 2027.