TOKAS Creator-in-Residence 2026 Exhibition "Walking Barefoot"

This two-part exhibition presents the work of 13 Japanese and international creators who took part in residencies in Tokyo and at various locations around the world in 2025. Part 1 brings together seven creators, including those who produced work during their stay at the TOKAS Residency with the shared theme of “Technology and the future of humanity,” and Part 2 brings together six creators, with each part presented as a group exhibition in a shared space. In our society, people’s values and ways of thinking are often defined by the groups to which they belong. Much like a pair of shoes, this protects us and makes it easier to navigate the world, while at the same time placing a certain distance between us and the world. In pursuing their respective themes, the artists featured here, whether by choice or by necessity, slip off those shoes and walk the world barefoot to feel it afresh. In their practices, which deal with social relations, we see perspectives that set aside categories and roles to refocus on the individual. By tuning in to the thoughts of those living in other times or places, or looking closely at a part of the body, they encounter others on a plane apart from location or identity. When confronting what lies beyond the human, however, the shoes of society are of no use. Human beings have formed groups and developed societies in order to survive in the face of threats from the natural world. Even so, when we re-engage with nature, we have no choice but to stand as barefoot creatures equipped with nothing but our own body and senses. Whether of their own accord or out of necessity, the creators step away for a time from the assumptions of society, embrace a degree of vulnerability, and seek to close the distance between themselves and the world. Just as walking barefoot over grass or stone reawakens us to the richness of texture and the delicacy of our skin, they draw on their own felt experience to form fresh connections with the world. In this exhibition, the paths they have walked barefoot come into view.