Ei Arakawa-Nash to Represent Japan at 2026 Venice Biennale
By ANNABEL PRESTON
Portrait of EI ARAKAWA-NASH with his twins. Photo by Ricardo Nagaoka. Courtesy the artist.
The Japan Foundation has named Los Angeles-based performance artist Ei Arakawa-Nash as the Japan Pavilion’s representative at the 61st Venice Biennale, which will open in April 2026.
Born in 1977 in Fukushima, Arakawa-Nash has been active since the early 2000s as a pioneer for the international visibility and advancement of performance art. Drawing upon the 1950s and ’60s avant-garde, as well as the postwar Japanese Gutai movement, Tokyo Fluxus, and Viennese Actionism, his performances are often improvisational and collaborative, engaging artists, art historians, as well as audience members.
Arakawa-Nash’s new installation for the Biennale will be based on his experience as a queer parent raising newborn twins in the Asian diasporic community of Los Angeles, with the intention of “dissect[ing] nationalism and patriarchy.” According to the artist, his forthcoming project will also reference Natto Wada’s 1962 film Being Two Isn’t Easy about the ups and downs of raising a child in modern-day Tokyo.
In a statement, Arakawa-Nash said: “I thought I would never have a chance to represent Japan at the Venice Biennale after I gave up my Japanese nationality a few years ago.” He added that “since the pandemic, the selection process for the Japan Pavilion has drastically changed. . . . This task of representing the country is getting more complicated. But from a different perspective, this means the artist has more agency to turn their ideas into a show. . . . I want to bring something new and open in terms of the administration and history of exhibition-making at the Japan Pavilion.”
A curator is yet to be announced.
Annabel Preston is an assistant editor at ArtAsiaPacific.
