Izumi Kato
Izumi Kato: Road to Somebody
Iwami Art Museum
Masuda
Jul 5–Sep 1 

“Izumi Kato: Road to Somebody” not only marks the artist’s largest solo show in Japan to date, but also Kato’s homecoming to the Shimane prefecture, where he was born. Kato first established himself as a painter, depicting otherworldly, bulbous figures that resemble child, spirit, alien, and embryo all at once. His artistic output also extends to sculpture that invokes animistic and folkloric traditions, using materials such as stone, wood, textile, and plastic. Through bold, vibrant colors and sinuous, biomorphic lines, Kato’s work oscillates between ancient and contemporary references, stirring up both identification and estrangement in the viewer’s mind. With more than 200 works on display, ranging from never-before-exhibited oil paintings from Kato’s high school years to musical projects, this retrospective at Iwami Art Museum serves as a career milestone for Kato, giving audiences a rare glimpse into the evolution of his sustained practice.

Christine Sun Kim 
MAM Project 033: Christine Sun Kim
Mori Art Museum
Tokyo
Jul 2–Nov 9

Following the opening of her lauded midcareer survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, multidisciplinary artist Christine Sun Kim presents her eponymous exhibition at Tokyo's Mori Art Museum. Working deftly across drawing, video, sculpture, and installation, Kim amplifies the non-auditory, spatial, and political dimensions of sound. Much of her oeuvre translates American Sign Language to graphic forms such as musical notation, infographics, and text, blurring boundaries between the visual, the sonic, and the haptic. Fusing irreverence, pathos, and criticality, Kim pries open new methods of communication and attunement, unveiling the manifold ways deaf experience intersects with motherhood, sociality, pedagogy, and more. This show will also include a new mural and sound installation titled Community Sigh (2025).

Maya Erin Masuda
Ecologies of Closeness
Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media
Yamaguchi City
Jul 5–Nov 2

At Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media, emerging artist Maya Erin Masuda presents her solo show “Ecologies of Closeness.” Using historical instances of radiation exposure and contamination as a point of departure, Masuda investigates the persisting impact of ecological trauma through her installations and multimedia interventions. Synthesizing multiple academic disciplines, from queer theory to biopolitics and posthumanist discourse, Masuda demonstrates the proliferation of both visible and invisible forms of toxicity in our environment, illustrating how human, animal, planetary, and machine bodies are profoundly enmeshed in one another’s lives. 

Vincent Van Gogh
Van Gogh’s Home: The Van Gogh Museum, the Painter’s Legacy, the Family Collection, the Ongoing Story
Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts
Osaka
Jul 5–Aug 31

Organized in partnership with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and three Japanese museums, “Van Gogh’s Home” is the first exhibition of its kind in Japan to center the Van Gogh family and their collection. Behind Van Gogh’s signature canvases of swirling vitality and color, there lies a moving family portrait of commitment, anchored by Van Gogh’s brother, Theo, Theo’s wife Johanna, and their son Vincent Willem. Each of them shaped Van Gogh’s legacy in their own way, be it through compiling his correspondence, managing his estate, or establishing a foundation. “Van Gogh’s Home” depicts a tender lineage in which stewardship emerges as the most ardent form of love. This presentation in Osaka comprises over 30 of Van Gogh’s works in the family collection in addition to several of the artist’s own letters, works by Van Gogh’s contemporaries, and immersive digital experiences. 

Prolonged Emergencies
National Museum of Art, Osaka
Osaka
June 28–Oct 5

At the National Museum of Art, Osaka, the group show “Prolonged Emergencies” responds to the unrelenting barrage of disasters, be it natural, political, or technological, that contribute to the tenor of anxiety and disquiet in our contemporary moment. Curated by Azusa Hashimoto, this exhibition corrals a diverse group of eight artists working from different impulses and aesthetics, running the gamut of photography, digital art, moving image, painting, and installation. These artists collectively question and postulate methods of subsistence and resistance in the present, while speculating possibilities for a nebulous, open-ended future. 

From the Origin to the Future
Naoshima New Museum of Art
Naoshima
May 31–

In celebration of the opening of Naoshima New Museum of Art (NNMA)— Tadao Ando’s tenth architectural contribution to the Benesse Art Site Naoshima constellation—the institution presents an inaugural exhibition spotlighting works by 12 artists and groups from the Asia-Pacific region. The exhibition consists of numerous newly commissioned works, activating a variety of spaces in the building, from the galleries to its cafes and outdoor grounds. In distinction to other museums in the Benesse consortium which focus on permanent installations, the NNMA will not only feature rotating exhibitions and public programs, but more importantly, it will serve as the first museum in Benesse to focus exculsively on contemporary Asian art. “As the first museum to be located within a village on the island, NNMA further. . . embodies the spirit of Naoshima—rooted in the local community yet open to the world,” museum director Akiko Miki noted.

Chen Fei
Father and Child
WATARI-UM, The Watari Museum of Contemporary Art
Tokyo
Jul 3–Oct 5

Chen Fei’s solo show, titled “Father and Child,” is an intimate, autobiographical account of the artist’s observations of parenthood through painting and installation. This body of work is informed by a turning point in Chen’s personal life—he became a father during the pandemic. “I realized it came down to something quite plain: I simply wanted to paint my child. Life’s center shifted, and my energy was naturally redirected toward the child’s growth,” Chen notes. The artist’s expansive inspirations stretch from the painterly language of Neoclassicism, William Morris patterns, to the work of the German cartoonist E.O. Plauen and Japanese manga and anime, resulting in compositions that counterbalance formal rigor with the endearing humor of a dad joke. What Chen harnesses in this show is nothing less deceptively simple than the translation from experience to art. He takes on the mantle of his own life and reveals the many refractions of the parent-child relationship: a bond that finds grandeur in its quotidian granularity, universality in its inimitable specificity. 

Ethan Luk is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.