EXHIBITIONS
Tokyo Contemporary Art Award 2024-2026 Exhibition “Wetland”
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The Tokyo Metropolitan Government and Tokyo Arts and Space established the Tokyo Contemporary Art
Award (TCAA) in 2018 as a contemporary art prize to encourage mid-career artists to make new
breakthroughs in their work by providing them with several years of continuous support.
An award exhibition is held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo featuring Umeda Tetsuya
and Oh Haji, the winners of the fifth TCAA.
About the Exhibition
The most recent works of Umeda Tetsuya and Oh Haji, the two winners of the fifth TCAA, are incorporating their respective examinations of water-related topics such as sea routes and waterways, as central elements.
Oh’s exhibition mainly revolves around the “Grand-Mother Island Project,” which appeals to visitors’ memories by taking them on a journey around imaginary “islands” connecting the stories and histories of human individuals, while Umeda, who has been visualizing the structures of things through performances that sometimes involve “excursion” like activities, creates new guidelines in the exhibition space that, like divisions between front and back, or marshland between the sea and the mainland, may gently overlap, or be reversed entirely.
- Period
- Dec 25 (Thu), 2025 - Mar 29 (Sun), 2026
- Closed
- Mondays (except Jan 12, Feb 23), Dec 28 - Jan 1, Jan 13, Feb 24
- Open Hours
- 10:00-18:00
- Venue
- Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Exhibition Gallery 3F (4-1-1 Miyoshi, Koto-ku, Tokyo)
- Organizers
- Tokyo Metropolitan Government and Tokyo Arts and Space / Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture)
- Admission
- Free
Artists
UMEDA Tetsuya
Photo: SHIEH Hiroyasu
Born in Kumamoto in 1980.
Umeda produces installations that are inspired by and incorporate existing
elements found in the environment and circumstances surrounding the exhibition
space including its architectural structure. In addition to exhibitions in
museums and art institutions, he has produced numerous site-specific works based
on the context of both urban spaces and the natural environment. Performance
works are presented in Japan and abroad, such as tours inviting the audience to
unfamiliar places, stage works focusing on functions found in theaters, and
chorus projects without a center point. He is also internationally renowned as a
leading artist in the field of sound art.
Installation view at “wait this is my favorite part,” WATARI-UM, The Watari Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, 2023 Photo : AMANO Yuko
Installation view at “wait this is my favorite part,” WATARI-UM, The Watari Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, 2023 Photo : AMANO Yuko
“Tetsuya Umeda in BEPPU ‘0 Tai’,” Beppu and other locations,
2020
Photo : AMANO Yuko
“Tetsuya Umeda in BEPPU ‘0 Tai’,” Beppu and other locations,
2020
Photo : AMANO Yuko
OH Haji
Photo: SHIEH Hiroyasu
Born in Osaka in 1976.
Oh creates installation works utilizing textile-making techniques such as
weaving, dyeing and unravelling, as well as photographs/cyanotype, texts and
sounds. Drawing on her background as a third-generation Zainichi
Korean, she creates artworks to give expression to the untold memories—silent
memories—of women and unnamed individuals. She explores the concept of
post-memory by sharing experiences and dialogue through a collaborative process
of community workshops.
Artists’ Comment
The Grand-Mother Island Project that I have been focusing on in recent years, mainly revolves around the succession of memory, and sharing space and time through installations and workshops. During my TCAA-supported overseas research, I had several opportunities to encounter people who were eager to connect events of the past to younger generations, as well as their activities and their vivid related memories. Meeting all these people at each place that I visited, was for me a precious chance to learn about their various approaches and attitudes. In addition to my previous works, at this exhibition I will unveil a new work that is based on interviews and research related to Ama divers (women who dive for shells and other marine life), that I conducted on the Tsushima and Jeju islands. Making this work was an operation comparable to patching together pieces of miraculous encounters. Additionally orchestrated through an unexpected collaboration with Umeda Tetsuya, the exhibition space—including also the creative process itself—is supposed to function as an environment where visitors can let their memories fly, and their own stories mingle with those of others.
A House of Memory Traces, 2019 Photo: NEMOTO
Yuzuru
Photo courtesy: Contemporary Art Center, Art Tower Mito
Nautical Map, 2017-2019 Photo: KIGURE
Shinya
Photo courtesy: Kurumaya Museum of Art, Oyama City
Seabird Habitats, 2022, installation view at
“Roppongi Crossing 2022: Coming & Going,” Mori Art Museum, Tokyo
Photo: KIOKU Keizo Photo courtesy: Mori Art Museum, Tokyo
Wearing Memory, 2014 Photo: YAMAMOTO Tadasu
Related Events
[Artist Talk]
A member of the selection committee talk with the featured artists about the selection process, exhibited works, and future plans.
- Date
- Jan 10 (Sat), 2026 15:00-16:30 (Doors open at 14:30)
- Participants
- UMEDA Tetsuya, OH Haji, TAKAHASHI Mizuki (Executive Director and Chief Curator, CHAT / The chair of the TCAA 2024-2026 Selection Committee), the curator of the exhibition
- Moderator
- SHIOMI Yuko (Director, Arts Initiative Tokyo [AIT] / TCAA Selection Secretariat)
- Venue
- Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, B2F Auditorium
- Capacity
- 180 participants
- Booking deadline
- Jan 9 (Fri)
*Admission Free / Reservations required / With Japanese-English simultaneous interpretation
Please book from the booking form before the deadline.
[PLAYTIME / PRAYTIME (Composed and directed by Umeda Tetsuya) Screening+post-show talk]
We will be screening a video work that is one of the origins of the exhibition plan conceived by Umeda for this exhibition.
- Date
- Jan 12 (Mon), 2026 15:00-17:00 (Doors open at 14:30)
- Venue
- Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, B2F Auditorium
- Capacity
- 180 participants
- Booking deadline
- Jan 11 (Sun)
- Video provided by
- Bunkamura (planning and production) NTT EAST, Inc. (cooperation)
*Admission Free / Reservations required
*Please do not enter or exit after the screening starts.
Please book from the booking form before the deadline.
*Please note that the schedule and details of the event are subject to change.
*Related events are scheduled during the exhibition period. Details will be announced on this page.
Monograph
A monograph will be published for each award winner in Japanese and English (scheduled for August 2026, not for sale), featuring images of the respective artist’s works, written contributions by the artists and experts, and pictures of the exhibition. After publication, they will be available on the TCAA website and will be distributed by post (in Japan only) to those who request them.
Details will be announced on this page.
About TCAA 2024-2026
Applications from the public were solicited in June 2023, and the selection committee members nominated candidate artists, including those from the public, and selected nominees through discussion. The two winners were then decided upon through an interactive screening process that included preliminary research on each artist, online-based studio visits and interviews.
International Selection Committee
TAKAHASHI Mizuki [Executive Director and Chief Curator, CHAT]
NOMURA Shino [Senior Curator, Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery]
Sofía HERNÁNDEZ CHONG CUY [Director, Kunstinstituut Melly]
Lesly MA [Ming Chu Hsu and Daniel Xu Associate Curator of Asian Art in the Department of
Modern and Contemporary Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art]
WASHIDA Meruro [Director, Towada Art Center]
KONDO Yuki [Program Director, Tokyo Arts and Space]
*Positions and titles current as of the time of the 2023
selection
process.
Selection Secretariat
Arts Initiative Tokyo [AIT]
The press release is available here（1.5 MB）.
Artists’ Comment
Although the plan was so unconventional that it would have been only natural if a public art museum didn’t want to have anything to do with it, I was able to take it to a point just shy of completion thanks to the support of everyone involved.
I wish to put together an exhibition that inspires visitors to remember quite casually that things we usually separate in order to understand them—front and back, ground and figure, ordinary and extraordinary—are just two sides of the same coin.
In times when we are flooded with depressing news, it is my desire to continue my creative work while “flipping the coins” one by one and transforming things that we cannot or should not forget, into things that give us pleasure.