Rei Naito: come and live – go and live

Rei Naito

Naito was born in Hiroshima in 1961 and currently works in Tokyo. She has been creating works based on the question of, “Is our existence on the Earth a blessing in itself?” In her work, life and death are explored as something inseparable. She has been creating installations that find “scenes of our Earth-bound existence” through natural phenomena such as light, air, water, and gravity.

Her notable solo exhibitions include: One Place on the Earth (Sagacho Exhibit Space, Tokyo, 1991); One Place on the Earth (The Japan Pavilion, 47th Venice Biennale, 1997), Being Called (Karmeliterkloster, Frankfurt am Main, 1997); Tout animal est dans le monde comme de l’eau à l’intérieur de l’eau (The Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura, 2009), the emotion of belief (Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum, Tokyo, 2014); the emotion of belief (The Japan Cultural Institute in Paris, 2017; Two Lives (Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, 2017); on the bright Earth I see you (Contemporary Art Center, Art Tower Mito, Ibaraki, 2018); Mirror Creation (21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (2020); and breath (Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München, Munich, 2023). Naito’s permanent installations include: Being given (Kinza, Art House Project, Naoshima, Kagawa, 2001) and Matrix (Teshima Art Museum, Teshima, Kagawa, 2010).

She was recognized as one of the Promising Artists and Scholars of Contemporary Japanese Arts in the genre of installations (Japan Arts Foundation, 1994), and was awarded the First Asahi Beer Arts Award (Asahi Beer Arts Foundation, 2003), the 60th Mainichi Art Prize (2018), and the 69th Minister of Education Award for Fine Arts (2019).