Aichi Triennale - Press Release / February 1, 2024

Aichi Triennale Announces Theme and Curatorial Team for
A Time Between Ashes and Roses
The Sixth Edition of the Acclaimed Arts and Culture Festival Opens
September 13, 2025

Adrián Villar Rojas, Mi familia muerta (My Dead Family), 2009. Photo by Carla Barbero.

(Aichi, Japan, February 1, 2024) – Aichi Triennale is pleased to announce the theme for its sixth
edition, A Time Between Ashes and Roses, on view from September 13, 2025 to November
30, 2025. The 2025 festival and curatorial theme is organized by Artistic Director Hoor Al
Qasimi and reflects upon fluctuating states and connections that exist between ecologicalenvironments, human activity, and the narratives and theories that unite them. The title isborrowed from modernist poet Adonis, who wrote “How can withered trees blossom? / A time
between ashes and roses is coming / When everything shall be extinguished / When everything
shall begin again” following the destruction of the Six-Day War in 1967. Al Qasimi’s curatorial
vision will bring together multiple regions throughout Aichi prefecture, guiding visual arts,performances, and learning programs presented throughout the festival. In addition to Aichi
Arts Center in Nagoya, the 2025 iteration includes special collaborations with Seto City andAichi Prefectural Ceramic Museum, which will highlight the continued presence of Japanese
craft alongside international and modern-day ceramic projects. Transcending time, location,genre, and artistic medium, the 2025 triennale will possess an aesthetic and theoretical charge
Press Contact: Aichi Triennale Organizing Committee (Public Relations Department) E-mail:press@aichitriennale.jp Web: https://aichitriennale.jp/en1

Aichi Triennale - Press Release / February 1, 2024
to illuminate the creative prospects between apocalypse and blossoming, human andenvironment.
“Our hope for the 2025 Aichi Triennale is to create spaces for dialogue around our sharedplanet that move with urgency and a commitment to new horizons of ecological andinterpersonal relation,” said Hoor Al Qasimi, Artistic Director. “Achieving a balance ofperspectives from internationally-based and Japanese artists as well as collectives, the works
on view will propose alternative futures that decenter human modes of extraction and illuminate
the complex relationships between Earth and its inhabitants.”
Al Qasimi is joined by a curatorial team ranging from visual to performing arts, offering expertisein local traditions of Aichi and beyond. Iida Shihoko, Head of Curatorial leads the curatorial
team across disciplines, supported by: Curator, Aichi Prefectural Ceramic Museum Irizawa
Masaaki, Curator (Contemporary Art); performing arts producer Nakamura Akane, Curator(Performing Arts); architect Tsuji Takuma, Curator (Learning); Associate Professor, Akita
Public Art University Ishikura Toshiaki serving as a Curatorial Advisor; and Curator, Fukuoka
Asian Art Museum, Cho Sunhye, also as a Curatorial Advisor. The 2025 Aichi Triennale will
include cutting-edge contemporary art through exhibitions in several venues across theprefecture, including the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, and through digital platforms,performances and dance from across the globe presented at Aichi Arts Center, and learning
opportunities catered to diverse audiences. Collaboration sits at the heart of the festival,
welcoming art universities and other community organizations throughout Aichi to participate in
the breadth of programming. Additionally, projects from artists who will participate in the 2025
iteration of the Aichi Triennale will travel sites throughout the region in varying pop-up
exhibitions.
The Artistic Director and curatorial team have selected a group of artists that approach thebotanical world as a place of the unknown, unearthing new narratives and observing alternative
perspectives along spectrums of the human-environmental pathway. Additionally, A Time
Between Ashes and Roses will emphasize a futurity empowered by geologic time views, further
questioning the boundary between human and environment with layered complexity. Artists
invited include Adrián Villar Rojas (b. 1980, Rosario, Argentina) who embraces temporality as
an aesthetic beyond brevity or duration; folding past, present, and future on themselves, Villar
Rojas constructs large-scale and site-specific works that mourns a humanity at risk of—oralready—disappearing from the hubris of our anthropogenic conditions. Ogawa Machiko (b.
1946, Tokyo, Japan) produces from a primordial knowledge inherent in the minerals thatcomprise clay. Having learned her craft in Paris and from indigenous practices in West Africa,Machiko embraces properties such as distortion and glaze crawling, creating utsuwa (vessels)that encompass the dichotomy of making and breaking. Dala Nasser (b. 1990, Beirut, Lebanon)
encounters landscape through the slow violence of erosion (both environmental and political),reanalyzing the colonial contours of landscape through indexical mark making by way ofperformance, painting, and film. Finally, Oki Junko (b. 1963, Kanagawa, Japan) darns life into
fabric collages that grow and fade between weathered materials and new purpose through thePress Contact: Aichi Triennale Organizing Committee (Public Relations Department) E-mail:press@aichitriennale.jp Web: https://aichitriennale.jp/en2

Aichi Triennale - Press Release / February 1, 2024
artist’s hands, yielding a primal view that moves beyond their manmade materiality. These
temporal landscapes embrace the uncertainty of chance with lyrical dread and bliss.
A Time Between Ashes and Roses enjoins a disparate world through a celebration of thepuzzling connections that populate our world, and the 2025 Aichi Triennale bridges this distanceby connecting audiences local and international through its provocative programming. The fulllist of artists will be announced at a later date alongside further details around programming andeducational initiatives.
Website: https://aichitriennale.jp/en/
Press Contact: press@aichitriennale.jp
About Aichi Triennale
Presented every three years since its first edition in 2010, the Aichi Triennale is the preeminent
global arts and culture festival in Japan. From its inception, the triennale has welcomed local
and international artists, curators and cultural leaders to produce experiences fusing the visualand performing arts, learning components and community. In addition to the prefectural capitalNagoya city, the Aichi Triennale shares the overall region’s historical traditions with the rest of
the world across museums, theaters, and various venues by way of an exhibition that highlights
and celebrates transcendent contemporary art practices.
With every edition, the triennale collaborates with different cities throughout Aichi to platform
innovative approaches to art-making and performance, integrating and expressing curatorial
themes through each region’s distinct historic sites, institutions and environments. At its core,
the arts festival finds balance between the global and local communities through its rigorous
examination and critical eye on our shared present. Each year, participating artists andcollectives continue Aichi Triennale’s founding mission of presenting cutting-edge art that
fosters spirited cultural exchange and innovative contributions to contemporary visual andperforming arts.
As a complement to its creative programming, the Aichi Triennale also curates learningcomponents organized by a dedicated team to ensure cross-cultural learning and engagement.
Extensive educational aspects of each edition connect students of all ages with instructors tomeaningfully engage with art through dialogue, material practice and community-building.
Serving as a festive moment where art and communities intersect, the triennale generates new
possibilities of expression that welcome and challenge the most pressing conversations of ourtimes. As a whole, Aichi Triennale extends beyond the conventional limits of the festival format
to honor the shared affinities between artists and viewers alike.
About Aichi Prefecture
Aichi originates from the poet Takechi Kuroto before it was chosen as the emblematic name of
the region, a unification of the Owari and Mikawa domains. Between the Pacific Coast and thePress Contact: Aichi Triennale Organizing Committee (Public Relations Department) E-mail:press@aichitriennale.jp Web: https://aichitriennale.jp/en3

Aichi Triennale - Press Release / February 1, 2024
Mikawa Highlands, Aichi boasts a varied environment known for its agriculture and flower
cultivation.
Aichi, the third largest metropolitan region in Japan, welcomes visitors to a thriving urban centerwith a distinct food culture with dishes such as Hitsumabushi and Ogura Toast. Through the20th and 21st centuries, Aichi has been the center of Japan’s technology and manufacturingindustries with companies such as Toyota, Denso, Aisin and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries,
optimized by its location between Tokyo and Kyoto. Additionally, Aichi Prefecture is the secondlargest home of foreign residents in Japan, with a growing population of over 7,400,000.
Alongside its manufacturing base, the prefecture hosts a number of traditional industries
including karakuri puppetry, ceramics, and textiles. Included on UNESCO’s shortlist of
Intangible Cultural Heritage, Aichi boasts five “Yama, Hoko and Yatai” float festivals yearly. Withits future-facing economy and culture, Aichi prides itself on its continued connections with local
traditions and nature. As the heart of Japan, the prefecture represents an exuberant display ofculture that shares the best of Japan with the rest of the world.

Press Contact: Aichi Triennale Organizing Committee (Public Relations Department) E-mail:press@aichitriennale.jp Web: https://aichitriennale.jp/en4