Born in Hiroshima Prefecture in 1976, Fujishiro received a doctoral degree in Fine Arts from Hiroshima City University in 2005. He has remained based in Hanover since participating in an exchange program at Hochschule Hannover - University of Applied Sciences and Arts. His work consists of glass beads, which have long been treasured as accessories and ancient commodities, and safety pins. His motifs include natural objects, such as flowers and animals, and other everyday objects, such as playground equipment and shopping bags. Through his painstaking and time-consuming process of manually threading tens of thousands of beads, he creates a new paradise within our familiar everyday scene. His representative work, Where is my Paradise? reflects his questioning of his own circumstances: being a studio-bound artist due to his creative process and the limitations of his non-native language—with his Japanese heritage. His resplendent work turns this inseparable life-labor-artwork link into questions for modern consumer society and materialism, which are posed to people who enjoy the freedom he could only glimpse through the window. Nevertheless, he intentionally avoids excessive criticism. This ambiguity is perhaps what constitutes Fujishiro’s paradise, inspiring multiple interpretations.

His recent major exhibitions include the solo exhibition Where is my Paradise? (SIC! Gallery, Poland, 2016) and No Strings (National Glass Center Sunderland, UK, 2020). Major awards include the Silver Prize at the Toyama International Glass Exhibition 2021 (2021), the Jutta Cuny-Franz Award (2011), and the Coburg Prize for Contemporary Glass (2014). His work is included in the collections of the Museum Kunstpalast, the Museum August Kestner, and the National Glass Center (Sunderland, UK).

Born in Hiroshima Prefecture in 1981, Kuwata graduated from the Kyoto Saga University of Arts Junior College (now Kyoto Saga University of Arts) in 2001, and from Tajimi City Pottery Design and Technical Center in 2007. He pursues artistic expression outside the conventional framework of ceramic art. His unique visual language combines pop colors and a colorful palette with excessive application of traditional ceramic techniques such as kairagi (a textured surface that resembles the granular texture of shark skin caused by glaze shrinkage), ishihaze (lit. “stone bursts,” referring to the irregularities or cracks on a ceramic surface caused by the expansion of small stones in the clay during firing), and tenteki (application of glaze in a dotted pattern). At the same time, his practice seamlessly incorporates Japanese traditions, such as tea culture, as evident in the title of his large-scale sculptural work, Chawan (Tea Bowl). In recent years, his focus has included producing interior décor by extending the elements within his studio, as well as returning to the origins of ceramics—the concept of “food.” His newly launched Ku craft collection integrates mass-production techniques fostered in Tajimi, a city in Gifu Prefecture known as Japan’s ceramic capital. His work spans from vessels for everyday use to extraordinary sculptural pieces. Oscillating between these extremes, he brings new perspectives and creativity to each realm.

His major solo exhibitions include Together Shiyoze! (Let’s Get Together!) (Salon 94, USA, 2025) and Kamaage Udon(Gallery & Restaurant Butaiura, Tokyo, 2025).He was also featured in the group exhibition Strange Clay: Ceramics in Contemporary Art (Hayward Gallery, UK, 2022-2023).Significant awards include the Loewe Craft Prize Special Mention (2018) and the 2021 Japan Ceramic Society Award (2022). His work is housed in public collections worldwide, including the Rubell Family Collection, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Palm Springs Art Museum, and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa.

Born in Saitama Prefecture in 1963, Oki graduated from the Setsu Mode Seminar in 1991. Inspired by her late mother’s sewing tools, she began teaching herself embroidery in 2002. She has developed her creative activities while embracing the idea of stitching as a way to engrave the traces of life on fabric.

Her embroidery style is characterized by direct stitching onto the fabric without underdrawings. It resonates with her approach toward patched antique fabrics (called boro). Her unique designs, crafted with this simple technique, casually cast aside the preconceived notion of embroidery. The time and stories behind antique fabrics and tools are intertwined with Oki’s own, breathing a new life imbued with contingency. Her creation process also involves hand-washing the embroidered fabric to entangle the fibers of the antique fabric with the newly applied embroidery. This allows the dyes to bleed into each other, mingling the memories and time within them. Through this layered manual approach, she attempts to embody the aesthetics nurtured in plain lifestyles from premodern times through contemporary expression.

Her major solo exhibitions include the 11th Shiseido Art Egg (Shiseido Gallery, Tokyo, 2017), anthology (Hagi Uragami Museum, Yamaguchi Prefecture, 2020), and OKI Junko: The Exposed (The Museum of Modern Art Kamakura Annex, Kanagawa Prefecture, 2022). Her major group exhibitions include Go for Kogei 2021 (Natadera Temple, Ishikawa Prefecture, 2021) and Imaginal Crafts (National Crafts Museum, Ishikawa Prefecture, 2024). In 2014, the art book PUNK (Bungeishunju) was published, featuring her work that she photographed herself. Her work is housed in public collections including the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, and the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama.

Born in Ibaraki Prefecture in 1984, Kawai received a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in Fine Arts from Chelsea College of Art and Design in 2007. In 2018, he graduated from Kasama College of Ceramic Art in Ibaraki Prefecture. Following a hiatus from artistic production after returning from London, he began exploring creative expression through ceramics, prompted by an encounter with the medium in his hometown of Kasama. Stepping away from the conventional approach of pursuing materials and styles, he sees clay as a medium for projecting fiction, contradiction, and desire. The result is an excessive yet fragile form that intertwines his identity and the cultural residues behind it.

Kawai’s artistic expression cannot be discussed without considering the Shibuya and Harajuku culture of the late 1990s and early 2000s, which he admired as a teenager and is often incorporated into his installation works. However, the views conveyed by magazines, TV, and other mass media invariably contain a gap with reality. His work captures this gap within a chaotic mass coated with glazes of extreme colors reminiscent of bodily fluids. It presents layers of candy-like sweetness and an awkward feel as if entering forbidden territory.

His major exhibitions include the solo show Precious Time (KOTARO NUKAGA, Tokyo, 2025) and the group exhibition Foolish Fire (Newchild Gallery, Belgium, 2023). Other exhibitions include The Armory Show 2024 (New York, USA, 2024) and Frieze Los Angeles (Los Angeles, USA, 2020). His works are part of the collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Loewe Collection.

Mishima was born in Kyoto Prefecture in 1962. She moved to Venice in 1989, where she began working with glass in 1996. In 2011, she established a residence in Kyoto, and is now based in two locations.

Throughout her three-decade artistic journey, she has consistently worked with glass artisans on Murano Island. She acts as a conductor, closely observing the state of the glass and guiding the artisans by communicating her vision through improvisation. As she describes her work as the “fruit of the fire”—a creation born from the fusion of material and craftsmanship in blazing flames—its organic forms are filled with vitality. These pieces are spontaneous, inevitable outcomes of the production process rather than something consciously fabricated for their form.

Mishima, as an explorer of light, is uncompromising about the use of colorless, highly transparent glass. Its “reservoir of light” generates subtle refractions, reflections, transmissions, and shadows, which allow a sculpture to blend into its surroundings, morphing into a device that captures the surrounding light. Each piece shines as a standalone work, yet together in the exhibition space, they begin to create a polyphony.
Her recent major solo exhibitions include Ritsue Mishima - Glass Works (Gallerie dell’Accademia, Italy, 2022) and In Grimani (Museo di Palazzo Grimani, Italy, 2013). Major group exhibitions include Wonderment Noe Aoki / Ritsue Mishima (Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum, 2024) and the 53rd Venice Biennale (Venice Pavilion, 2009). Her work is included in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and Museum JAN, among others.

Born in Shizuoka Prefecture in 2000, Wata earned a master’s degree in craft at Kanazawa College of Art in 2025. All fabrics are created through the repetitive patterns of weaving, yet Wata finds her creative playground in the narrow spaces between threads. Even seemingly flat fabrics have a semi-three-dimensional structure formed by intertwined threads, and she explores this by creating sculptural works that rise taller than herself. Her creative process always begins with manually plying threads. She also undertakes the labor-intensive process of dyeing threads with earth. For Wata, who says, “I just spontaneously sought a primitive process of creation,” these choices were an inevitable fate. Although she considers her sculptural approach—which uses the weight of the fabric itself—as primitive, it echoes her artistry of emphasizing materials and techniques, such as shifting qualities of plying and weaving from the top to the bottom. Through this process, Wata pursues a primal beauty created by humans. However, this pursuit is not about going back to the past, but rather a search for a synchronous beauty that transcends time and culture.

Her major exhibitions include Go for Kogei 2024 (Iwase Area, Toyama Prefecture, 2024) and Kuma experiment 2023-24 vol.6 Haptics in Everyday Life (Kuma Gallery, Tokyo, 2024). Major awards include the MUFG Special Award at Forbes Japan 30 Under 30 2024 (2024) and the President’s Award at the 67th Kanazawa College of Art Graduation Works (2024). Her work is included in the collection of the Kanazawa College of Art.

Born in Hokkaido in 1982, Nakata studied lacquerware at the Kagawa Urushi Lacquerware Institute and graduated from the Kanazawa Utatsuyama Crafts Workshop in 2021. Nakata is an urushi (lacquer) artist who has uniquely developed the Kinma technique. This decorative lacquer art technique involves engraving a design on a multi-layered middle coating, which is later filled with colored lacquer. In Nakata’s approach, approximately forty layers of colored lacquer are applied to a total thickness of just 0.5 mm, and the surface is then polished to achieve a vibrant, organic pattern. The scale of her work is also noteworthy. The greatest allure of her work lies in the harmonious coexistence of dynamic forms and the elaborate techniques hidden within.

Her creations are inspired by “memories” of her real-life experiences. Scenes that captivate her (e.g., lightning, a cloud, or a flying bird) are depicted with layered colors. Since her production process takes a minimum of four months to sometimes a year, daily changes have a direct impact on the work. Consequently, even the pivotal memory itself settles with some “fluctuation.” Her work presents different expressions depending on the viewer’s perspective, as if indicating that memory is not self-evident and definitive, but rather an ever-changing phenomenon itself.

Her recent major exhibitions include the solo show The Skies Above – The Lacquer of Mayu Nakata (A Lighthouse called Kanata, Tokyo, 2024), as well as the group exhibitions The Secrets of Color: from Impressionism to Contemporary Art (Pola Museum of Art, Kanagawa Prefecture, 2024) and Imaginal Crafts (National Crafts Museum, Ishikawa Prefecture, 2024). She was a finalist for the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize (2019). Her work is in the collections of the National Crafts Museum and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, among others.

Born in Tokyo in 1985, Komuro earned his Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture from the Tokyo University of the Arts in 2011. Drawing inspiration from his childhood favorites, including American comics, action figures, and science fiction films from the 1980s and 1990s, he creates wood sculptures integrating the unique texture and design of soft vinyl toys. His sculptural language was developed through his work producing small-lot soft vinyl figures in the U.S., which began as a commission from an LA-based company. His artistic expression currently revolves around wooden sculptures that mimic these industrial products, along with mass-produced soft vinyl figures.

All of his works feature highly flexible designs made possible through meticulous 3DCG simulations, free from physical limitations. Despite their pop and kitschy appearance, Komuro sees sculpting itself as a sacred practice. When a plaything (the Japanese term for “toy” is written as an “item to play with”) is presented at a larger-than-life scale, it evokes a supernatural power that resembles Buddhist statues or figures from Greek mythology. Komuro’s sculptures seamlessly bridge the gap between idols of worship and icons of consumer society, capturing the essence of his work.

His major solo exhibitions include Vortex (Ginza Tsutaya Books Ginza Atrium, Tokyo, 2019) and Phantom Cave (StolenSpace Gallery, London, 2023). Major group exhibitions include Go for Kogei 2023 (Masuda Shuzo Masuizumi, Toyama Prefecture, 2023) and Juxtapoz Clubhouse (Superchief Gallery, USA, 2018). He released bronze sculptures titled Sphinx - Kira (2023) and Ground Dragon (2022) in collaboration with Avant Arte.

Born in Tokyo in 1981, Muta graduated from Goldsmiths, University of London, with a BA in Fine Arts in 2008, and from Ishikawa Prefectural Kutani Ware Technical Training Institute in 2012. She pursues a unique style of expression based on the ceramic painting technique she learned from the traditional Kutani ware in the Kaga region of Ishikawa Prefecture. For Muta, painting means depicting a scene through the accumulation of production processes, from shaping the clay to underdrawings, glazing, and overglaze painting. Although shaping clay is regarded as the “background” realm, she seeks to incorporate the tactile qualities achieved through hand-building into the “image” to create a unified beauty with integrity. Her artistic expression embraces the evolution of the “view of nature,” based on her in-depth study of existing ceramic painting designs. Rather than viewing the designs as mere depictions of nature, she focuses on the emotions toward nature that are captured by the craftspeople of their time, such as admiration, desire, reverence, and fear. Like an icon of such an imperfect human mind, Muta’s color paintings emerge as a harmonious blend of reality and illusion, real existence and fiction, motion and stillness.

Her major exhibitions include the solo show The Eyes of Vessels (Ginza Tsutaya Books Ginza Atrium, Tokyo, 2021), as well as the Cheongju Craft Biennale (Cheongju, South Korea, 2023) and Go for Kogei 2021 (Otaki-Okamoto Shrines, Fukui Prefecture, 2021). Major awards include the Grand Prize at the 11th Paramita Museum Ceramic Art Grand Prize Exhibition (2016). Her work is housed at the National Crafts Museum, Paramita Museum, and the Kutani Porcelain Art Museum. She is the author of Yoca Muta: The Aesthetic Ceramic Vessels (Geijutsu Shinbunsha, 2020).

Born in Tokyo in 1985, Tatehana graduated from the Tokyo University of the Arts in 2010, majoring in textile art. As a contemporary artist, he explores contemporary values through traditional Japanese culture and craftsmanship, guided by his creative philosophy “Rethink.” This philosophy involves a pursuit of artistic expressions of Japanese traditions and culture with contemporary interpretations, instead of simply reproducing them in contemporary contexts. His signature work, Heel-less Shoes, was inspired by the elevated wooden clogs worn by oiran (elite courtesans) in the Edo period. The piece has become a globally iconic fashion item after being popularized by the American singer Lady Gaga. Tatehana has also actively collaborated with numerous traditional craftspeople (e.g., Edo kiriko glass, kinkarakawashi paper, and kumihimo braiding). Furthermore, the two signature motifs of Tatehana—lightning bolts and clouds—symbolize Japan’s religious landscape or its evolution that embraces the syncretism of Shintoism and Buddhism. These motifs serve as an essential language for him, as he seeks to transcend binary oppositions, such as heaven and earth, and life and death.

His major exhibitions include Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion (The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tokyo, 2012), Noritaka Tatehana: Aesthetics of Magic (Taro Okamoto Memorial Museum, Tokyo, 2016), Items: Is Fashion Modern? (The Museum of Modern Art, New York City, USA, 2017), traveling exhibition Contemporary Japanese Crafts (Panasonic Shiodome Museum of Art, Tokyo, 2020), and Edo Tokyo Rethink (Kyu-Iwasaki-tei Garden, Tokyo, 2024). His works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, among others.