Japan 2026

Title: Grass Babies, Moon Babies
Commissioner: The Japan Foundation
Curators: Lisa Horikawa, Mizuki Takahashi
Exhibitor: Ei Arakawa-Nash

The exhibition creates an immersive journey activated by visitors through acts of care and movement. Upon entering the Pavilion, visitors are invited to hold and carry one of 200 baby dolls through the Pavilion’s pilotis, gardens, and interior spaces. Visitors participate in a final act of collective care by changing the dolls’ nappies and activating a QR code that delivers a “diaper poem” based on each baby’s assigned birthday. These birthdays are shaped at the intersection of the artist’s intimate, personal experiences and the long arc of historical and social forces within and beyond Japan.

The exhibition’s identity takes the form of a minimal, AI-assisted calligraphic logo, reflecting the dual imagery of “moon” and “grass,” while subtly alluding to a landscape from the perspective of infants.

The Pavilion unfolds over the full seven months of the Biennale as an evolving platform shaped by the participation of visitors and collaborators alike. Preparation, maintenance, and care become integral components of the exhibition itself, blurring the boundaries between rehearsal and presentation, private labour and public performance. In this way, the flow of audiences through the Pavilion continually reshapes the work, transforming the space of visual art into a site of lived choreography.

The project also reflects the artist’s own experience of becoming a parent in 2024. For Arakawa-Nash, care is not only emotional but also structural: a form of labour that is socially distributed and historically gendered. Through the simple yet demanding act of holding the dolls, visitors are invited to engage physically and emotionally with the often invisible labour of caregiving.

Born in Japan and now working transnationally, Arakawa-Nash approaches the Japan Pavilion from a diasporic and queer perspective. The exhibition foregrounds collaboration and multiplicity rather than singular representation, expanding the framework of the national Pavilion through a constellation of voices and practices.