Hibiya Art Park 2025

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First Period

CONCEPT

Combine, envision, and play.

When playing with blocks as kids,
things are combined into houses or cars.

This is where “transformation” comes from.

“Transformation” using rivers, lakes, or sand in natural settings
has been traditionally practiced in Japanese landscaping.
This concept is also used in flower arranging.

In this exhibition, the basic techniques of “transformation” will be undertaken
through collaborations with contemporary art.

Curator, Junya Yamamine

TITLEForest for Momentum

ARTIST Takehito Koganezawa + Seijun Nishihata
TITLE Statue of Hainuwele

ARTIST Hiroko Kubo
TITLEGentle Hand

ARTIST Hiroko Kubo
TITLEHibiya Ping Pong Platz

ARTIST Giacomo Zaganelli
TITLE The Structure of Nest

ARTIST Keita Miyazaki

LATEST NEWS

2025.05.08
ジャコモ・ザガネッリ｜5/10《Hibiya Ping Pong Platz》presents: “LA FESTA”開催！
2025.05.07
アンバサダー・山本美月さんによるインタビュー映像を公開！
2025.04.23
《Forest for Momentum (流れを生む森)》
光と音が立ち上げる、“都市の中の森が生む新たな「場所」”
2025.04.17
ジャコモ・ザガネッリ｜花や植物をテーマにしたトークイベント開催！
2025.04.10
久保寛子『ハイヌウェレの彫像』ワークショップ「作品制作を体験しよう」参加者募集！
2025.04.10
Market Event

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Exhibition Artworks

“Forest for Momentum”

Takehito Koganezawa
+ Seijun Nishihata

“Gentle Hand”

Hiroko Kubo

“Hibiya Ping Pong Platz”

Giacomo Zaganelli

“The Structure of Nest”

Keita Miyazaki

“Statue of Hainuwele”

Hiroko Kubo

“Forest for Momentum”Takehito Koganezawa
+ Seijun Nishihata

Forest for Momentum

A forest grows where there should be none
It rains even when it’s sunny
Light swells in the dark night
Smoke rises where there is no fire

A place is not just a space. Neither is it just the land.
When an event occurs on the physical earth, a “place” emerges.

Up until now, Hibiya Park has served as a “place” with many faces.

It was the last residence of Date Masamune and was also the training ground of the Imperial Army. It was Japan's first Western-style garden, where both state funerals were held and riots broke out. Men and women coupled at night, and after the earthquake, temporary housing was built there. During the war, the garden was used as a field and anti-aircraft guns were installed. After the war, it was confiscated by GHQ and used as an outdoor dance hall.

Takehito Koganezawa and Seijun Nishihata are about to create a new “place” here in Hibiya.
Flowers will meet light, rain will meet smoke. Color will meet the darkness of night, and the sun will meet the forest.
We hope to create a place where people, creatures, inanimate objects, and phenomena encounter each other.
“Gentle Hand”Hiroko Kubo

Gentle Hand

The motifs of this work include the gestures seen in the ancient Egyptian goddess Nut, who is a visualization of night sky, and also Japanese Buddhist figures with their round and delicate forms. To embody the artist’s idea of strength and fragility of the human body, the work has great volume and dynamism, yet shows lightness and frailty. Its surface is made by blue tarp, which is often found in construction sites or disaster areas, originally made to temporarily protect objects from weathering. With this material as the sculpture’s skin, the work symbolizes the encounter between human and nature, also destruction and creation. It is made specifically for water sites. Its reflection on the water’s surface expands the work’s sphere. It emphasizes the subtleness of the touching point, hence brings tension between object and viewer.
“Hibiya Ping Pong Platz”Giacomo Zaganelli

Hibiya Ping Pong Platz

Hibiya Ping Pong Platz is an experimental art project that consists of installing ping pong tables suitable for play in public space. The work becomes an unconventional human relationships facilitator, exploring the role of contemporary art and the ways in which people relate and interact with it. A free place open to everybody that becomes a platform for unexpected encounters.

The project is a tribute to the prematurely deceased Junya Yamamine - close friend of the artist and curator of the project “Transformed Composition” - who strongly wanted to see a Ping Pong Platz project blossoming in Hibiya Park.

The artwork is part of the evolution of an independent cultural project called Ping Pong Platz, conceived by the Italian artist Giacomo Zaganelli in collaboration with Ayumu Haitani and Silvia Piantini, which began in 2022. The initiative was born in Sumida, Tokyo, and aims at highlighting the potential of outdoor ping-pong tables as a social tool to foster conviviality, aggregation and interaction between all people. Over the years the project has grown and in 2024 Zaganelli created the first permanent plaza (the German word “Platz” means public square) by installing three sculptural tables, four monolithic benches and a lighting system in the city of Tsuyama, Japan, commissioned by the Forest Festival of the Arts Okayama.
"The Structure of Nest"Keita Miyazaki

The Structure of Nest

Keita Miyazaki, who creates sculptures out of car scraps, brings something foreign to the usual structure of a park when taking on the challenge of exhibiting his work there.

Parks are often designed to keep cars out, as they are meant to serve as places to get away from the noise and bustle of the streets. However, by daring to bring alien waste materials into the park through this work, the artist creates an opportunity to consciously think about the meaning of the materials. Just as birds move pieces of man-made objects into their nests in nature, Miyazaki attempts to create a nest in a pond by bringing in waste materials. In this way, the work will become a force that transforms the park into a place that stimulates the imagination.

A cast of a crane stands in the center of the cloud-shaped pond in Hibiya Park. Inspired by its presence, Miyazaki was strongly motivated to place a work of art there. The creators of the crane sculpture, Nobuo Tsuda and Yukio Okazaki, are both Miyazaki’s senior students at Tokyo University of the Arts. The park is a place where people's historical constructions overlap, and it is the artist’s belief that we can create a new place through a dialogue that transcends time and space by interacting with our predecessors in the past. Through the work, it is the artist’s aim to provide visitors with the inspiration to imagine the future.
“Statue of Hainuwele”Hiroko Kubo

Statue of Hainuwele

“Minuma” is a large area of marshland that had once extended within the city. Beside Hikawa Shrine is a shrine that reflects the former presence of a folk religion known as Arahabaki, whose origin is said to date back to the Jomon period. Most of the Jomon clay figurines that serve as motifs in this work represent women, and many of them were found in a partially damaged state. While there are various theories behind this, the work focuses on one that considers broken fragments of figurines to have been scattered upon the soil in effort to pray for a rich harvest. From this theory it is possible to discern ideas associated with “Hainuwelen-style” myths surrounding the origin of food. Observed in various mythologies across the world, such myths tell the story of how crops were born from the corpse of a slain god.

Plants planning/coordination：Plant hunter Seijun Nishihata

ARTIST

Takehito Koganezawa

Seijun Nishihata

Hiroko Kubo

Giacomo Zaganelli

Keita Miyazaki

Takehito Koganezawa

Takehito Koganezawa is an artist who was born in 1974 and graduated from Musashino Art University.
He started showing his works publicly during university, and after graduation he moved to Berlin, where he became internationally acclaimed. Starting with video expression, he went on to create works using a variety of media and techniques including two-dimensional, three-dimensional, sound, and text. In recent years, he has focused on “place” as a space where the sense of movement of drawing and the improvisational nature of performance overlap. His work often collaborates with performing arts such as theater and dance, as well as with music. Moreover, he served as the director of “Ongakudo no Picnic (Picnic at the Music Hall)” at Kanagawa Prefectural Music Hall for three years from 2022 to 2024. He has shown work in numerous museum exhibitions in Japan and abroad, especially in Europe, and his works have been featured in large-scale international exhibitions such as Yokohama Triennale, Sharjah Biennial, Aichi Triennale, Montreal Biennale, and Manifesta.
Koganezawa’s works are held in collections at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Mori Art Museum, and others. Takehito Koganezawa is an artist who was born in 1974 and graduated from Musashino Art University.
He started showing his works publicly during university, and after graduation he moved to Berlin, where he became internationally acclaimed. Starting with video expression, he went on to create works using a variety of media and techniques including two-dimensional, three-dimensional, sound, and text. In recent years, he has focused on “place” as a space where the sense of movement of drawing and the improvisational nature of performance overlap. His work often collaborates with performing arts such as theater and dance, as well as with music. Moreover, he served as the director of “Ongakudo no Picnic (Picnic at the Music Hall)” at Kanagawa Prefectural Music Hall for three years from 2022 to 2024. He has shown work in numerous museum exhibitions in Japan and abroad, especially in Europe, and his works have been featured in large-scale international exhibitions such as Yokohama Triennale, Sharjah Biennial, Aichi Triennale, Montreal Biennale, and Manifesta.
Koganezawa’s works are held in collections at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Mori Art Museum, and others.

CURATOR

Junya Yamamine

Curator / Producer
NYAW inc. CEO / Visiting Professor, Tokyo University of the Arts

After working with the planning office of the Japan Media Arts Festival, Junya Yamamine served as a curator at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, and Contemporary Art Center, Art Tower Mito, before founding and directing ANB Tokyo. He later founded NYAW Inc., a planning and consulting firm for culture and art-related projects. Major exhibitions curated by Yamamine include “Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions” (4th to 7th Festivals), “Hello World - for the Post-Human Age” (Art Tower Mito), and "The World Began without the Human Race and It Will End without It” (National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts). He also directed the specially curated exhibitions for MEET YOUR ART FESTIVAL 2023 and 2024, the public art project “Playground Become Dark Slowly” held in Hibiya Park, and the initiative “Ladder Project” for cultivating artists. He has supervised and written
numerous art programs and features for magazines and television. He also lectured and served on juries for various programs, and was dispatched overseas by international institutions. Moreover, he independently conducted research and evaluated the impact relating to social common capital including culture, and in 2024 he began journeying across regions to rediscover the appeals of local areas.
He served as an external advisor to Japan’s National Center for Art Research and an individual member of the CIMAM (International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art).

We send our heartfelt prayers to Mr. Yamamine who passed away this year as we carry on his thoughts and ideas through this project.

ACCESS

Venue

Hibiya Park

Hibiya Koen, Chiyoda City,
Tokyo

Access from the Nearest Stations

Tokyo Metro Marunouchi Line / Chiyoda Line: Get off at "Kasumigaseki" Station (B2 Exit), located just outside the exit.
Tokyo Metro Hibiya Line / Chiyoda Line / Toei Mita Line: Get off at "Hibiya" Station (A10 or A14 Exit), located just outside the exit.
Tokyo Metro Yurakucho Line: Get off at "Sakuradamon" Station (Exit 5), 5-minute walk.
JR Line: Get off at "Yurakucho" Station, 8-minute walk.

Parking Information

A coin-operated parking lot is available underground at Hibiya Park. Paid parking is available at Hibiya Automobile Parking. For details on parking, click here
(Hibiya Park does not manage any parking facilities.)

ORGANIZER

Tokyo Metropolitan Government

Flower & Light Movement

Curated by: Junya Yamamine (NYAW inc.)

Planning and Production: Nanami Sudo (NYAW inc.), Nanana Kanmuri (Tiarart.com), 　　　　　　　　　　　　ArtTank Ltd., Shouta Kanehira (URBAN PATCH LLC)

Production and Management: Rights Apartment Inc., Ltd.

Space Design: YUKO NAGAYAMA & ASSOCIATES

Design: LABORATORIES

Lighting: RYU Inc.

Construction: Artifact., Ltd., SANKYU INC., SHIMAO INDUSTRIES.Co.Ltd.

Support: Embassy of Italy Tokyo, Italian Cultural Institute in Tokyo

Artwork Cooperation: Chishima Real Estate Co., Ltd.

Public Relations: Avex Creator Agency Inc.

Cooperation: Tokyo Metropolitan Park Association

Curated by:
Junya Yamamine (NYAW inc.)

Planning and Production:
Nanami Sudo (NYAW inc.), Nanana Kanmuri (Tiarart.com), ArtTank Ltd., Shouta Kanehira (URBAN PATCH LLC)

Production and Management:
Rights Apartment Inc., Ltd.

Space Design:
YUKO NAGAYAMA & ASSOCIATES

Design:
LABORATORIES

Lighting:
RYU Inc.

Construction:
Artifact., Ltd., SANKYU INC., SHIMAO INDUSTRIES.Co.Ltd.

Support:
Embassy of Italy Tokyo, Italian Cultural Institute in Tokyo

Artwork Cooperation:
Chishima Real Estate Co., Ltd.

Public Relations:
Avex Creator Agency Inc.

Cooperation:
Tokyo Metropolitan Park Association

Special Website Flower and Light movement.

Some programs are limited, so we recommend making reservations ahead of time.

Aokid will hold workshop program “Wanpaku-Work: Kids and Adults, Come Join the Park’s Playbox”! Aokid, a dancer and artist, will hold a workshop that helps us relearn how to “play” by moving around the park using our bodies and our minds.
As children, we must have learned many things as we spent time playing in different places. Adults and children alike are invited to come join for warm-up exercises and experience touching the trees, soil, and stones, as they look all around the park, making full use of their bodies and the park to create their own form of "play = expression". Will it be a song, a dance, a painting, or a movie? From chapters one to three, participants are free to join throughout the day or partially. We invite you to come play in nature, so absorbed in it that you won't notice the evening coming.

Chapter 1: “Kitohito (Trees & People)” ｜13:00-14:15
Beginning with Aokid's preparatory exercises “Henteko Taiso (Silly Exercises)”, participants will be exposed to nature in the park and familiarize their bodies with the environment.

Chapter 2: “Chizu, Bou, Ken (Maps, Sticks, Swords)”｜14:30-15:45
Focusing on the characteristics of each location in the park, participants will create their own expressions and movements, practicing “envisioning” by viewing wooden sticks as swords, and expanding the map of their “playground”.

Chapter 3: “Ma, Ho (Ma-gic)”｜16:00-17:30
Each expression created by the participants will be gathered together to create and present a single performance.

*Chapters 1 through 3 are taken as a series of “play”. Participants may join for all chapters, or by single chapters.

■Date: May 18 (Sun) 13:00-17:30 (Time by Chapter: ① 13:00-14:15 / ② 14:30-15:45 / ③ 16:00-17:30)
■Check-in Location: General Information
■Program Location: All over Hibiya Park
■Participants: Anyone can participate
■Capacity: 20 people per chapter (approx.)
■Duration: 75 minutes or more
■Reservation Required:
*Canceled in the event of rain.
Reservations
■Profile
Aokid was born in Tokyo in 1988, and started breakdancing at the age of 14. He spent his adolescence immersed in dance and film. While studying film at Tokyo Zokei University, he began creating performing arts and art works. He presented the solo dance piece “Earth Freedom!” (ST Spot, 2019) and held the solo exhibition “An empty house for the arts” (nito, 2024).

6steps will hold “Place 6steps in Hibiya Park” workshop program! “6steps” is a 6-step wooden staircase. We have been working with choreography and stage setting in various places and spaces, spending time with all kinds of people through performances and non-performance-oriented endeavors, exploring what it means to dance in society, and to be alone while still being with someone. Held for the first time outdoors in this event, we will be quietly placing a 6-step staircase (6steps) in the grass field of Hibiya Park. Anyone can participate for free and enter as they wish, so please come and climb up and down the stairs as if you were taking a stroll.

“Place 6steps in Hibiya Park”
In the grassy plaza of Hibiya Park, we will quietly place “6steps (6-step staircase)” that lead nowhere. On the day of the program, we will climb up and down the steps, take in the view, chat, and spend some time there. Afterwards, we will remove the “6steps” and gather again to spend time in the space where the steps used to be. The project representative Reina Kimura and team members are waiting for you in Hibiya Park.

■Dates:
May 18 (Sun) 14:00
May 22 (Thu) 14:00
May 24 (Sat) 14:00

■Program Location: Grass Field
■Participants: Anyone can participate
■Duration: 120 minutes (approx.)
*Reservations not required, participants may come and go
*Canceled in the event of rain.

■Profile
6steps
“6steps” is a dance project that makes use of a 6-step wooden staircase and can be experienced through one’s sense of sight and touch. Choreographer and dancer Reina Kimura is the project’s representative, and is working with dancers, web engineers, observers, visual artists, and stage producers to explore the function of a platform that connects performing arts and society. Kimura choreographs and directs performances, invites artists to direct performances, and from 2023 will start a project that places 6steps (6-step staircases) in various places and spaces, where she interacts with visitors. While opening up places, time, and choreography from multiple angles, she is searching for dance that involves various bodies.

Reina Kimura / Choreographer, Dancer
Reina Kimura is the founder and representative of 6steps. She is involved in concepts, choreography, and occasional performances, and is interested in the relationship between climate, language, and the body, as well as the way people live and exist. She has created and performed in various locations in Japan and abroad while exploring the question, “For whom does dance exist?” In recent years, she has also worked as a researcher and facilitator for dance projects, working with the bodies and minds of people of all ages. She is a Saison Fellow II as of 2025.

Masashi Nukata will hold “Telephone Game” workshop program! “Telephone Game” workshop program will be held by Masashi Nukata, who leads the contemporary pop band Tokyo Shio Kouji and the theater company NUTHMIQUE. He is active not only in music composition but also in the field of performing arts, as he bases his activities on the question, “What is performance?” Everyone from children to adults are are free to join us in this program.

“Telephone Game”
There are many sounds in the park. Footsteps in leather shoes, birds singing, water dripping from a fountain...are just some of the sounds that surround us. Participants themselves will translate these sounds into words, and other participants will use these words to find them in the park. Even if the sounds you hear are the same, the way you describe them in words and the way you feel them may differ from person to person. You will listen carefully to the sounds, put them into words in your own way, and experience the difficulty and fun of communicating them to someone else.

■Date: May 23 (Fri) 15:00 / May 25 (Sun) 11:00
■Check-in Location: General Information
■Program Location:Green Field Area (tentative)
■Participants: Anyone is welcome to participate
■Capacity: 12 people (approx.)
■Duration: 80 minutes (approx.)
*Priority is given to those who make reservations in advance.
*Canceled in the event of rain.
Reservations
■Profile
Masashi Nukata was born in Tokyo in 1992, and leads the contemporary pop band Tokyo Shio Kouji and the theater company NUTHMIQUE. He is active not only in music composition but also in the field of performing arts, as he bases his activities on the question, “What is a performance?” He continues to work across the fields of music and theater, having performed with his band at the FUJI ROCK FESTIVAL and having his play "Bonyari Blues" nominated for the 66th Kishida Kunio Drama Award.

Yuuki Hasegawa will hold workshop program “Migratory Workshop Integrating Nature and Theater - Exploring Memory and Theater by Walking Around”! A migratory workshop integrating nature and theater titled “Exploring Memory and Theater by Walking Around” will be held by Yuuki Hasegawa. This is an experiential workshop in which participants create their own short theater piece about their memories of the park and present resulting pieces to each other. No previous acting experience is required.

“Migratory Workshop Integrating Nature and Theater - Exploring Memory and Theater by Walking Around”
This is an experiential workshop in which participants themselves create and perform a short theatrical piece based on their own memories of the park, using Hibiya Park as a stage. Participants will create a performance of 10 minutes or less at their favorite spots in the park, and at the end of the workshop, a promenade performance will be held in which participants and the audience tour around the park to view all teams' pieces. We invite participants to enjoy this theatrical experience integrated with nature as the audience themselves move through the landscape and enter the world of their stories.

■Date: May 25 (Sun) 14:00
■Check-in Location: General Information
■Program Location: Cloud-Shaped Pond - Grass Field - Mikasa Hill Areas (tentative)
■Participants: Over middle-school age, no acting experience required
■Capacity: 20 people (approx.)
■Duration: 3 hours (approx.)
*Priority is given to those who make reservations in advance.
*Canceled in the event of rain.
Reservations
■Profile
Yuuki Hasegawa is a playwright, director, and comedian born June 16, 1982 in Fuji City, Shizuoka Prefecture.
He debuted in 2002 as a member of the comedy duo “Cleopatra”, and in 2017 launched “Ennui”, a union/place where people can get together for the purpose of creation. While working as a comedian, he is currently engaged in creating expressions across various genres, mainly in theater.