On October 6, the Noguchi Museum announced Vietnamese-born artist Danh Võ and Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto as the recipients of its 13th Isamu Noguchi Award. Presented at the museum’s annual benefit—which this year coincided with the 75th anniversary of Noguchi’s iconic Akari light sculptures—the award honors individuals working across various disciplines, who share Noguchi’s experimental artistic ethos. 

Võ, whose family fled Vietnam during the Cambodian-Vietnamese war (1978–89) and settled in Denmark, is a conceptual artist based between Berlin and Mexico City. His practice spans drawing, sculpture, and installation, often incorporating documents, photographs, and found objects with emotional or historical weight to explore questions of appropriation, identity, and collective memory. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale (2013, 2015, and 2019); the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2018); and the Pinault Collection at Bourse de Commerce, Paris (2023). Over the past decade, Võ has held multiple exhibitions engaging with Noguchi’s oeuvre, beginning in 2018 with “Noguchi for Danh Võ: Counterpoint” at the M+ Pavilion in Hong Kong and “Take My Breath Away” at SMK in Copenhagen. His most recent project is “Danh Võ in Situ: Akari by Noguchi” (2024– ) at the M+ museum.

Yamamoto is an internationally acclaimed fashion designer based between Tokyo and Paris, known for his avant-garde monochromatic garments featuring asymmetrical cuts and free-flowing silhouettes, which blend Western tailoring with Japanese minimalism. Throughout his nearly five-decade career, he has received several major accolades, including Japan’s Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon (2004) and France’s Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2011). Upon accepting the Isamu Noguchi award during the benefit, Yamamoto paid tribute to the late artist: “Isamu Noguchi created a language that opened up a space between East and West, and therefore beyond. I have always felt that creation should also exist somewhere between things, and thus in a space outside of apparent contradictions: between form and the body, strength and fragility, presence and absence.”

Eva Brank is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.