AWT BAR

The pop-up AWT Bar provides the city’s art community with a convivial gathering place and multisensory art experience during the five days of Art Week Tokyo. The platform entails three commissions: an emerging architect designs the bar space, a rising chef produces new edible creations for the menu, and selected artists conceive cocktails that reflect their artistic practices. It also hosts sound and performance events, deepening Art Week Tokyo’s ties with other creative scenes. 

The bar is located in the emergence aoyama complex in the heart of the trendy Minami-Aoyama district and is open from 10am to 10:30pm throughout Art Week Tokyo.

KURU KURU

Kuru Kuru is a bar where people gather and relax, while also functioning as a place for sharing information about Art Week Tokyo.

Arranged from elements that are similar yet subtly different, the space becomes one continuous landscape. The module—a simple form of 12 stainless steel arcs—opens and closes to become a place to sit, a surface to set things on, or sometimes simply an object. It holds no fixed shape or role. When these modules gather, they create a scene that belongs only to that place and time.

For Art Week Tokyo, that gathering takes the form of a lounge bar. In another place, another time, another setting, the same modules will find new relationships and shift into a different state.

—Kae Ito

ABOUT THE ARCHITECT

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 the Benesse Art Site Naoshima, Expo 2025 in Osaka, and numerous exhibition design projects. She is currently working on architectural and interior design projects in Japan and abroad.

PROFILE

RILLETTES DE CANARD AND PAIN D’ÉPICES GÂTEAU

This flamboyant gâteau turns into a savory canapé the moment you bite into it. Its sweet-looking structure is built around a layer of duck rillette mousse set on a pain d’épices base topped with caramelized walnuts and a flourish of apple chips marinated in cider vinegar. That gap between appearance and taste is the essence of entre, producing the surprise and discovery that come with having our preconceptions about food upended.

TARTE TATIN SABLÉ

With one bite, this simple and tidy canapé transforms into a dessert with a tarte tatin–like richness. It is made with caramelized apples arranged on a sablé Breton base and topped with a calvados-infused fermented buttercream fashioned like a quenelle. A finish of ground black pepper and olive oil accentuate the sweetness. This dish offers a culinary experience that activates both sight and taste through an unexpected encounter with a dessert in a savory-looking package.

NATSUMI AOYAGI: CAIPIRINHA DE CINCO SABÕES (CAIPIRINHA OF FIVE SOAPS)

This drink may look like a scoop of suds from the kitchen sink, but the moment you take your first sip you’ll be surprised by the earthy lime of a caipirinha instead of the soapy perfume of sabão.

The caipirinha’s name derives from caipira, a Brazilian-Portuguese term for someone from the countryside, similar to “country bumpkin.” Although the cocktail gained popularity in the early 20th-century as a tonic for warding off the Spanish flu, its origins trace back even further to when Portuguese sugarcane production was transferred from the island of Madeira to Brazil. Madeiran poncha, which the island’s fishermen drink to keep warm, is thought to be the prototype for caipirinha. And poncha was in turn likely inspired by traditional Indian punch, the name of which comes from the Hindi and Sanskrit word paanch, or “five.” 

Please enjoy this cocktail while reading the original fable of the “Caipirinha of Five Soaps” that comes with it. 

Cachaça, blue curaçao, lime juice, simple syrup, egg white, crushed ice, and a pinch of salt

ABOUT THE ARTIST

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 Invocation #4: Tokyo, “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 series of satellite projects; the ICC Annual 2024, “A Very Close Distance,” at the NTT InterCommunication Center, Tokyo; and the 10th Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions, held in 2018 at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum and other venues. 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, which was published in English under the title Done Being Nurtured. She is the founder of honkbooks.

PROFILE

MARIKO MORI: ALL THAT SHINES

I conceived this cocktail as an expression of the worldview behind “All That Shines,”my retrospective at the Mori Art Museum. The title reflects my belief that all living things have an inner light that shines within them. The soft spheres in the glass are the sparks of light that illuminate each and every person, while the glittering gold leaf symbolizes the preciousness of life and the radiance at its source. The tiny beads scattered around the glass represent the invisible ripples that are sent out into the world as our souls interact. This cocktail embodies my prayer that the inner radiance in each of us can enlighten the world and unite all beings as one.

Gold-leaf sparkling wine, tapioca balls, rose caviar, and kuzumochi

ABOUT THE ARTIST

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 Arts, University of the Arts 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 (1999); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2000); Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2002); Royal Academy of Arts, London (2012–13); and Japan Society, New York (2013–14). Her works are held in important collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Tate Modern, London.

PROFILE

YOSHIHIRO SUDA: PART-TIME JOB

Around the beginning of my artistic career I started doing part-time jobs as an illustrator. Some of the illustrations I made for cider and whisky brands are still in use, which gave me the idea of combining the two drinks in a cocktail. It’s a slightly bittersweet one.

Nikka Hirosaki cidery and whisky spray (choice of Yoichi or Miyagikyo)

ABOUT THE ARTIST

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 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 (2024–25). Suda is the subject of a forthcoming solo exhibition at the Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, Hayama, scheduled to open in March 2027.

PROFILE