Setouchi Triennale 2025 Fall Season Guide: Complete Guide to Dates, Venues, Highlights & More!

An installation presented in a Japanese-style room inside the historic building “Kura no Yakata, Sankaku-tei (Former Sakai Residence),” located in the Komachi area, Approx. a 2-minute walk from Utazu Town Hall.
Using salt as a material, countless bubble-like cells are drawn across the entire floor.
With forms that evoke crashing waves and the flow of tides, it creates a landscape where fragments of everyday life are woven together.
Each individual cell holds time and memories with someone important, allowing viewers to experience the shifting nature of memory.

An installation presented across three locations in the Komachi area: “Isenomiya Shrine,” “Hachiman Shrine,” and the “Former Suzuki Barber Shop.”
Singapore-born Zen Teh created this work through careful, on-the-ground research, and its strong ties to local life and festivals are clearly reflected in the piece.
A key feature is the immersive, introspective space that skillfully makes use of traditional settings such as shrines and the old townscape.
Each venue offers a different story and scenery, allowing viewers to sense Utazu’s town and time, nature and culture, in layered ways.

An outdoor work installed between “Umihotaru” and the “Restored Salt Field,” near Utazu Rinkai Park.
Nishizawa hand-carved and polished two acrylic panels (Approx. 210 cm wide × 130 cm high × 80 cm deep), giving them a sense of transparency and an organic form.
This expresses the work’s concept, “Memory and Distance to the Horizon,” aiming to unsettle the sense of distance between the Seto Inland Sea landscape and the viewer.
At the core is a poetic image: a messenger who seems far away is actually right beside you.

An installation in a traditional house in the Tomari area, featuring a large banner-like tapestry made from clothing and accessories collected from local residents, including those on Honjima.
On the materials, residents’ responses to Jakkai Siributr’s questions—“What do you want to leave for the future?” and “What is your most important memory?”—are carefully hand-embroidered.
Everyday traces of clothing express people’s memories, the changing seasons, and the fleeting nature of life’s cycle, weaving personal histories into the next generation.

An installation that uses an entire vacant house in the Kasashima townscape area.
In each room, different motifs—such as carved wooden objects and dolls, and plastic sheets with drawings—slowly rotate, casting shadows onto cloth and paper in a striking visual mechanism.
In sync with the movement of the shadows, recorded sounds play, featuring islanders talking about childhood memories and recent dreams.
As shadow and sound overlap, the space becomes like “collective lucid dreaming,” stimulating the viewer’s senses.

A network-based installation exhibited in the Tomari area.
When viewers blow air into the work, it changes in sync with a remote location.
An interactive setup that lets you feel a connection with another viewer in a distant place is a defining feature.

An installation set in the former home of Matsutaro Yokoi, who served as a sailor (crew member) on the Kanrin Maru (Japan’s first steam warship), located in the Tomari area.
Inspired by Edo-period (1603–1868) cedar-door paintings, mosque tiles, and church mosaics, the work features a vivid space that transcends painting cultures.

A steel sculpture in the Tomari area at the entrance to Honjima Port, inspired by the Kanrin Maru, Japan’s first sailboat to cross the Pacific Ocean.
Its design, which looks as if it has raised sails and is floating in midair, is striking, and its silhouette against the sea and rusted texture evoke the historic voyages of sailors from the Shiwaku Islands.
Since it’s one of the first things you see after arriving on the island, it has also become a landmark icon of the area.

EAT&ART TARO, whose theme is food, has long felt uneasy about situations where many people gather and eat in depopulated areas at art festivals and similar events.
In this exhibition, a dining space is set up Approx. a 5-minute walk from Takashima Port, serving tea and curry made with invasive plants harvested on Takashima.
By having visitors taste them, the project creates an opportunity to experience the island’s realities and think about food balance.
Research results on plant distribution on the island, collection volumes, population, and meal situations are also displayed.

An installation in a seaside traditional house that expresses the contrast between a rough sea and a calm sea by connecting countless ultra-fine stainless-steel wires.
Delicate cloud-like linework spreading from ceiling to floor and three-dimensional shading shift moment by moment as they catch reflected light, enveloping the viewer.
“Manoura” means the underside of the eyelids (a scene deeply engraved in one’s mind), and the work carries Murata’s wish that the space becomes a place to imagine the past scenes this house has witnessed, as well as the future.

A work that has been continuously produced through repeated research in the Itamochi district, an abandoned village on Takashima, since the 2019 exhibition.
It unfolds across the entire space of a single home located in an alley within the settlement.
Using Japanese painting materials such as mineral pigments and hemp paper, the work delicately depicts island scenes and fragments of life across different timelines through traditional techniques.
By interweaving past and present, it conveys the area’s story spatially.

A multilayered, richly colored installation that expresses flowers encountered on Takashima through photography, fusuma paintings, and ceramic objects.
Through Koeda’s unique method of combining photography and painting, the work questions the viewer’s gaze in the moment of seeing flowers.
The 2025 exhibition is a new three-part development staged in a private home Approx. a 10-minute walk from Takashima Port, bringing Takashima’s abundant nature, island history, and everyday scenes into focus throughout the space.

A work set in a traditional house right by Takashima Port, expressing the island’s 모습 as it is tossed about by the flow of time.
Multiple acrylic panels piercing the walls guide natural light into the interior, creating a quiet space where lines of light emerge in darkness.
Without using electricity, this approach incorporates the contingencies of the sun’s movement and weather, and its expression changes as the light shifts and time passes.
The crossing of an old house and new light gives viewers a sense of the past, present, and future overlapping.

A work that revives a former post office—built over 100 years ago—as a small theater in Awashima’s central area.
Nguyen Trinh Thi drew inspiration from the communication methods and everyday sounds of former sailors who lived on the island, evoking past communication culture and island memories throughout the space.
Messages submitted by islanders and visitors are converted into Morse code and then automatically performed, with instruments taking on the role of postal workers to artistically express traces of communication.
Through sound, it builds connections between people across time.

An installation presented at two sites: the “Lighthouse Garden” at the former Awashima Elementary School, and the “Temple of the Immigrant Garden” near Awashima Fishing Port.
Tuan Mami conducted fieldwork on the island’s history and residents’ stories, as well as Vietnamese immigrants living in Mitoyo City, and created the work based on their voices and daily lives.
While drawing on the region’s character, it encourages encounters and exchange among people with diverse backgrounds.

An indoor installation presented in a vacant house in Awashima’s central area.
Starting from an interest in the act of “fixing,” it traces island memories using broken and discarded items and everyday goods collected on the island.
This work quietly conveys the historical depth of Awashima by reflecting its landscape and culture in layers.
It also highlights Awashima’s relationship with the “ship” by using fragments of vessels that have remained especially important.

A work that rewove Awashima’s natural environment, drifted materials, and memories of history and daily life, reinterpreting the island as a “living canvas.”
Presented at a venue set up within the central village, it unfolds around three themes: materials as traces of Awashima, visualizing the flow of time, and retying the relationship between the island and its people.
Another key element is a participatory process in which Kashiwagi holds workshops and incorporates pieces created together with islanders and visitors into the work.

An art project based at the “Awashima Artist Village” in Awashima’s central area.
At Sokosoko Imagination Lab, artifacts lifted from the seabed, natural objects, and漂着物 are exhibited.
Through the stories they seem to tell, viewers can reflect on the world beneath the sea and the history of the Seto Inland Sea.

An installation set up in Awashima’s central area that lets visitors relive the memories of former sailors from Awashima.
Taorig Sarina is an artist from Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China, who creates works that emphasize space and experience, with “emotional exchange” that transcends nations and ethnicities as a central theme.
The lives of sailors who traveled the open sea and nomads who live on vast grasslands overlap, creating a fantastical space.

An installation set in a closed school in Ibukijima’s central area.
Reusing children’s costumes that were actually worn, it recreates a marching band that evokes the energy of the time.
It creates a space as if a ghostly marching band is jamming in session.
Through the work, it aims to revive the bustle of the former school and connect the memories of elderly residents who remain on the island with the dwindling number of young people.

A painting installation inspired by research on Ibukijima.
Giant fish and countless schools of small fish are depicted on large folding-screen-style panels, writhing among the waves.
Another highlight is its vivid expression of vitality, using a distinctive technique: incising lines into a thickly painted base, while scattered粒 of mineral pigments create scale-like patterns.
Exhibited at three locations scattered around the central area: the “Former Ibuki Branch Station Barracks,” “Ibukijima Folk Museum,” and the “Former Ibuki Elementary School.”

An installation presented in a traditional house in Ibukijima’s central area.
Based on the German fairy tale “The Fisherman and His Wife,” it features a stage-like composition incorporating craftsmanship from both Japan and Germany, such as dyeing, weaving, and carpentry.
By combining the island’s traditional textile and woodworking skills with Western techniques, it creates a vibrant space.

An outdoor sculpture installed in Ibukijima’s central settlement.
Its shrine-like form, made by combining bamboo and metal, was inspired by Bunpoad Pothisan’s impressions of a new generation of island residents.
Bamboo symbolizes unity and cooperation, while metal symbolically represents the island’s daily life, such as “homes” and fishermen’s tools.
The metal mesh is sturdy yet see-through, suggesting the fragility and impermanence of a culture that still exists yet is being forgotten, and highlighting the importance of passing it on.

An indoor installation exhibited in the central area of Ibukijima.
It gathers everyday items and tools that have supported island life and uses them as materials to express the island landscape “Garden of the Sea.”
By layering Ibukijima’s fishing nets in multiple tiers to represent the “sea,” it visually connects with the Seto Inland Sea spreading beyond the windows.
Also a highlight is how frayed nets and stitching shimmer in the sunlight like waves.