Born in the town of Sakaki, Nagano Prefecture in 1984. Since childhood, she has had close contact with various wildlife in nature and witnessed their deaths up close, which has led to her unique view of life and death, and her goal of expressing the beauty of death. In 2003, she entered Joshibi University of Art and Design Junior College. Attracted by the beauty of lines, she began making copperplate prints, and while she was a student, her copperplate print "49 Days" was praised and paved the way for her to become a professional. In recent years, she has expanded her field of production to include acrylic painting and Arita ware. Starting with dedicating her painting to Izumo Oyashiro Shrine in 2014, she has received numerous awards. Since 2015, her work has been featured in notable exhibitions overseas, and has attracted international attention, including permanent exhibitions at the British Museum and the World Trade Center, and a solo exhibition in Taiwan that attracted more than 30,000 visitors.
She continues to express motifs inspired by "something invisible" such as messengers of the Japanese gods, divine beasts, and people's prayers, as "creating works is a religious ceremony that is accompanied by prayer," with excellent performance.

Miwa Komatsu official website
https://miwa-komatsu.jp

Born in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture in 1979. His works provide a fresh perspective on familiar everyday matters, and continue to question how we see the world. He creates many works that reinterpret familiar industrial products such as zippers, magnifying glasses, and pencils from his own unique viewpoint, and find connections between humans and natural phenomena such as water, air, and gravity. His representative works include “Blinking Leaves,” “Ship of the Zipper,” and “Aerial Being.” His major solo exhibitions e. g. "Neighborhood Globe" at Art Tower Mito in 2014 and "SPONTANEOUS GARDEN" at Hakone Open-Air Museum in 2017. In 2021, he held a solo exhibition at the Tikotin Museum of Japanese Art in Israel. He exhibited works at international exhibitions–the International Contemporary Art Biennale Seville in 2008, the Setouchi Triennale in 2010, and the 4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art in 2011. He represented Japan at the 1st London Design Biennale in 2016. He won the Mainichi Design Prize in 2014. Professor at Musashino Art University and visiting researcher at the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Tokyo.

https://www.mabataki.com

《Perspective of the Globe Jungle》
2001

Photo: Rinko Kawauchi

《Blinking Leaves》 2003

Photo: Katsuhiro Ichikawa Courtesy of SPIRAL/Wacoal Art Center

《Zip-Fastener Ship》 2004/2010

Setouchi Triennale 2010

《Aerial Being》
2017

Born in Tokyo. After graduating from the Department of Art, Faculty of Humanities, Wako University, he worked at a publishing company. Since 1986, he has worked as a curator at Setagaya Art Museum, and became its director in April 2024. He has planned a number of exhibitions that are diverse and offer new viewpoints by broadening perspectives to unknown areas, with Japanese modern and contemporary art at the core, e.g. "The Paintings and Photographs of Junkichi MUKAI" (2002), "Ryohei KOISO" (2004), "Uchii Shozo Exhibition His Thought and Architecture" (2009), the department store-focused "Art + Living: Takashimaya The Department Store as a Culture Setter" (2013), "TOHO STUDIOS Innovative Filmmakers in Setagaya" (2015), "400 Years of Architectural Challenges― TAKENAKA: Master Builder in Japan" (2016), and "Tomoto Shisuko’s Paradise––I Can’t Help But Paint: A Picture Diary of My Life" (2021). His major papers are "Realistic Paintings: in the Case of Ryohei KOISO," "The Paintings and Photographs of Junkichi MUKAI" and "Two Lives in Palau." In 2018, he edited and published "Paintbrushes and Grass Roofs: essays by the Painter Junkichi MUKAI" He has received awards including the Japan Association of Art Museums Excellence Catalogue Award in 2007 for the exhibition "Two Lives in Palau," which was themed around the exchange between Nakajima Atsushi and Hijikata Hisanobu, and the Japan Association of Art Museums Encouragement Award in 2013 for "Art + Living: Takashimaya The Department Store as a Culture Setter."