2026/1/20
Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2026 ：Program Details and Over 30 Participating Artists Announced
2025/11/7
We have opened a new website.　　

About Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2026

Rather than taking a narrow view of the moving image, the Festival keeps its focus wide, attending to the many possibilities around it and reconsidering the diversifying forms of moving-image practice and the ways it is received. The Festival continues to serve as a platform for fostering and sustaining the alternative visions that art and the moving image can generate. Each edition sets a theme to explore “What is the moving image?” and presents work from Japan and abroad, all amid shifting conditions and diversifying frameworks and technologies in the field.

For the 2026 edition, while continuing to question the roles of the moving image and photography, the Festival considers social change from a more open and responsive perspective. As a platform for a polyphony of voices and practices, the Festival introduces new programs in sound and theater alongside moving-image and photographic work. In the 3F exhibition gallery, a presentation featuring works by Komori Haruka—recipient of a Special Prize in the second Commission Project—and works from the Tokyo Museum Collection will be on view, in dialogue with the overarching theme of the Festival. By staging edition-specific juxtapositions, the Festival creates space for multiple perspectives.

Period
February 6 (Friday) – February 23 (Monday, national holiday), 2026 [16 days]
Closed February 9 (Monday) and February 16 (Monday)
* 3rd floor gallery: February 6 (Friday) – March 22 (Sunday)
Venues
Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Yebisu Garden Place, and affiliated local facilities.
Time
10:00–20:00 (February 6–22)
10:00–18:00 on the final day (February 23)
* 3rd floor gallery, February 25 (Wednesday) – March 22 (Sunday): 10:00–18:00 (open until 20:00 on Thursdays and Fridays)
* Last admission 30 minutes before closing
Admission
Free
* Admission will be charged for some programs, such as screenings.
* Programs and schedules are subject to change.

あなたの音に｜日花聲音｜Polyphonic Voices Bathed in Sunlight

Contemporary society upholds the value of diversity, and yet even where people, cultures, and languages seem to share affinities, misunderstandings and misreadings inevitably arise. Armed conflicts persist, structural inequalities remain unresolved, and the frictions of our time multiply without prospect of conclusion. We inhabit an unstable and intricately entangled social condition. The overarching theme of Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2026 begins with Taiwanese language, introduced by the lead curator, Yu-Hsuan Chiu.
Taiwanese is a language that first spread orally, later shaped by phonetic symbols developed in the 19th century and by written forms using Chinese characters in the 20th century, producing a wide range of literature—including the Taiwanese (Formosa)–Japanese Dictionary, published in 1931. It shares many affinities with Japanese and continues to coexist with multiple systems of notation.
This Taiwanese phrase, composed of the words Jīt-hue1 (日花) and Siann-im2 (聲音), conjures an image of beams of light filtering between trees into a space alive with innumerable voices, none identical to another. Around us too, different voices move and intermingle, overlapping like an ensemble to form a resonant polyphony3. Guided by Taiwan’s language, itself layered with various cultural accumulations shaped by shifting historical currents, Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2026 seeks to gently illuminate the layered modalities of interaction through which diverse cultures and languages influence one another in contemporary society. Through photography, moving image, sound, and performance, thoughts and presences meet in intersection, resonating and overlapping, albeit sometimes dissonant, to unfold into an intricate visual and auditory polyphony. Individual voices and their states of being will not be effaced; rather, multiple perspectives will converge and expand together. Beyond the museum walls, through the myriad works you encounter within the multilayered spaces of Ebisu, we invite you to savor your own quiet reflections.

  1. Sunlight filtering through clouds or through the spaces between trees (Taiwanese (Formosa)–Japanese Dictionary).
  2. Voice, tone, sound, timbre.
  3. A musical term denoting the coexistence of multiple independent melodies in harmony. In contemporary usage, the concept has been extended beyond music into philosophy, cultural theory, and other fields, where it describes an open structure that enables collective participation.

PROGRAM

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TIMETABLE [PDF]

Commission Project | 3F Exhibition Galleries, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum

Launched in 2023 as an ongoing initiative of the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, the Commission Project selects Japan-based artists and premieres commissioned moving-image works as outcomes of the Festival’s renewed direction. For the 2026 edition, a special presentation by Komori Haruka—recipient of a Special Prize in the second Commission Project—will be presented in dialogue with the Festival’s overarching theme.

Tokyo Museum Collection | Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, 3F Exhibition Gallery

The Tokyo Museum Collection comprises materials and artworks owned by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and administered and stewarded by six metropolitan museums: the Edo-Tokyo Museum; the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum; the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo; the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum; the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum; and the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum. For the 2026 edition, a curated selection from the Collection will be presented in alignment with the overarching theme of the Festival, centred on the 3F gallery of the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum. Experience the breadth and richness of this civic collection.

Exhibition | Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, 2F/B1F Exhibition Galleries and 1F

Over the long course of history, as cultures and languages have shifted and unfolded into many forms, this exhibition asks how, through photography and the moving image, we can look back on the past and consider what it means to build an archive for the future. The B1F Exhibition Gallery serves as the Festival’s point of departure: beginning from the perspective of mobility and migration, it traces processes of transformation as the works register diverse influences from their environments. Where different voices intersect, affinities can sit alongside friction and misreading. Grounded in each artist’s own background, the moving-image and photographic works assembled here open onto a wide range of questions about such universal concerns as identity, historical memory, and society. Echoing the Festival’s overarching theme, Polyphonic Voices Bathed in Sunlight – 日花聲音, discrete tones and voices are drawn together into a multi-layered polyphony. Unconfined to any single site, these sounds reverberate throughout the Museum, so that the Festival as a whole feels wrapped in the presence of individual voices.

Screening | Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, 1F Hall

In keeping with the Festival’s overarching theme, the Screening program gathers a wide spectrum of works, from narrative features to experimental film. The lineup includes the Japan premieres of films by Morgan Quaintance and Sojung Jun, together with a special focus on Kosugi Takehisa and the Taj Mahal Travellers, featuring footage newly digitally restored by CCJ and now shown in Japan for the first time. Reaching beyond conventional screening formats, the program also presents sessions that weave together moving-image projection and live performance. It further turns attention to works by Komori Haruka, recipient of a Special Prize in the second Commission Project. Each screening is followed by a talk with directors and invited guests. In memory of the moving-image artist Oki Hiroyuki (1964–2025), the program also includes a memorial screening that honours the time shared with him at the 4th Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions and the first Commission Project, and the rich creative legacy he has left behind.

Live Events｜Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, 1F Hall, Studio, and Galleries

At the Museum’s 1F hall, studio, and galleries, the Festival presents performances, workshops, and artist talks that expand the frame of the moving image. In 2026, as a new initiative, the Festival introduces a theatre program and adds sound performances. Experience programs unique to this venue—work that extends the fields of the moving image and photography.

Educational Program｜Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, 1F Studio / etc.

For Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2026, the Educational Program offers a wide range of activities designed to help people of all generations enjoy the Festival more fully. You might discover a favorite work, reflect on the Festival, or deepen your understanding of moving images and photography through hands-on making. Alongside pre-registered events, there are also drop-in programs you can join spontaneously in the midst of your Festival visit. We warmly invite you to take part in whatever best suits your schedule.

Off-site Exhibition｜Yebisu Garden Place Center Square; Ebisu Sky Walk

Working across digital and analogue media, the Festival features exonemo—renowned for experimental projects within internet art—and FAMEME, whose practice examines individual and collective identity through video, performance, and other media. Their works unfold at Yebisu Garden Place Center Square and along the Ebisu Sky Walk, offering outdoor encounters that open up new modes of viewing for all visitors.

Partnership Program｜Affiliated local facilities

This year the program widens its scope beyond previous editions, adding multiple cultural institutions in and around Ebisu. Each venue presents a curated program of exhibitions and a variety of events. A sticker rally connects participating sites; collect stickers at these sites to receive a Festival-exclusive souvenir. Take this opportunity to explore the neighborhood.

Symposium｜Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, 1F Hall; Maison franco-japonaise

In line with the overall theme, あなたの音に｜日花聲音｜Polyphonic Voices Bathed in Sunlight, the symposium program explores multicultural perspectives on the moving image and photography, the roles of language, and offers an in-depth look at the Commission Project and the moving-image archive. With speakers from Japan and overseas, and unfolding as a wide-ranging series of symposia, the program considers, from multiple angles, the polysemy and potential of the moving image, photography, and sound.

アーティスト

ARTISTS

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ニュース

NEWS

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2026/1/20
Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2026 ：Program Details and Over 30 Participating Artists Announced
2025/11/7
We have opened a new website.　　
SEE ALL NEWS