DESIGNART TOKYO is an event that transcends genre boundaries, bridging design and art to create “twelve days in which the entire city of Tokyo becomes a museum.” In 2024, Kanazawa Kodama participated as one of the curators for the official exhibition.

The 2024 theme of DESIGNART TOKYO was “Reframing: The Beginning of Transformation.” The event focused on creators who break away from conventional frameworks and generate new values by reexamining familiar ideas from alternative perspectives. In response to this theme, four curators—each representing a distinct field—Kanazawa Kodama (Art), Kawai Masato (Design), Tachikawa Yudai (Craft), and Aoki Ryuta (Technology) selected 18 creators for the official exhibition.

Through discussions within the curatorial team, Kanazawa recognized the importance of the themes of the body and life, which led her to propose three artists/collectives for the exhibition: Kenji Hirasawa, HUMAN AWESOME ERROR (HAE), and Myoji Namae. Her curation ambitiously reconsiders the body from multiple perspectives, including experiences of tragic accident and illness, as well as feminist perspectives.

Hirasawa began working with thermographic photography after losing someone close to him in a traffic accident. Through photographic works that visualize traces of body heat using thermography, as well as sound works that vocalize body temperatures, he explores questions of human existence. By capturing the warmth released by the body, his works attest to the presence—past or present—of someone who has been there.

The unit HUMAN AWESOME ERROR (HAE), composed of Fukuhara Shiho and Umi Chae, exhibited Delinquent Son. In this work, Fukuhara—who received a cancer diagnosis during the COVID-19 pandemic—likens the cancer cells developing inside her own body to a delinquent son, creating its portrait using the craft technique of Tosa Tenguchoshi, a traditional Japanese thin paper.

Meanwhile, Myoji Namae takes famous female nude paintings by male artists and repaints the figures clothed. These images are then printed on T-shirts and mugs—objects resembling museum souvenirs—and displayed in a setting that evokes a museum shop. While sharply criticizing a society in which female bodies are commodified, the work allows viewers to purchase and take home items featuring the repainted figures, presenting its protest in a subtly satirical way.

Kanazawa selected and presented works that address social issues in a setting beyond the institutional frame of the museum, opening them to a broader audience and encouraging new modes of thought.

Artist Profiles

Hirasawa Kenji

Born in Tokyo in 1982, the artist is currently based in both Tokyo and London. While at university, he studied remote-sensing technologies using telecommunication satellites, and this experience has informed his ongoing exploration of how to preserve the brilliance of life for future generations. Using a thermographic camera—one of the instruments employed in such technologies—in combination with various other media, he has developed a practice centered on “human existence and life.”

His long-running portrait series visualizes the heat emitted by living organisms, extending the expressive range of photography to encompass the totality of life phenomena. This body of work forms the core of his practice. After relocating to the UK, he began photographing people of diverse races, genders, histories, and cultural backgrounds, creating works across photography, installation, and moving image. He has participated in numerous solo exhibitions, group exhibitions, and projects both in Japan and internationally. 

HUMAN AWESOME ERROR

Inspired by the uncertainty of self-certification in society, HUMAN AWESOME ERROR launched in 2019 as a collective seeking out thrilling perspectives from system errors. Comprising project teams centering on Chae Umi and Fukuhara Shiho, its interdisciplinary practice encompasses moving image, drawing, sculpture, installation, products, biotech, crafts, and more. In the project Super Cell, Fukuhara’s frozen cancer calls were transferred to a lab for culturing in an attempt to challenge bioethics and undertake new research into immunity. As of 2025, the collective is based in Tokyo and Kyoto, and exploring various themes.

Myoji Namae

Born in Hyogo Prefecture in 1987, she enrolled in the Oil Painting course of the Painting Department at the Graduate School of Fine Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts in 2019, and withdrew voluntarily in 2022. Drawing on her own experiences, her practice addresses issues surrounding women’s bodies, sexuality, identity, and their consumption. Her major awards include the Kanazawa Kodama Jury Prize at the CAF Award 2022 and the Grand Prix in the Exhibition category of SICF23 (2022). Notable exhibitions include Rokko Meets Art 2022, ‘Some Fairy Tales’ (2022) at Taku Sometani Gallery, Tokyo, and ‘I’ll give you a name’ at N project, Osaka.