The sixth Aichi Triennale seeks to encompass destruction and renewal

This year’s edition of the Aichi Triennale, the largest recurring contemporary art exhibition in Japan, is titled A Time Between Ashes and Roses and features works by around 60 artists and groups from 22 countries across venues in Nagoya, an industrial city in Aichi Prefecture. Hoor Al Qasimi, the artistic director for this edition of the triennial and the president and director of the Sharjah Art Foundation, says the theme deals with navigating a world where moments of beauty collide with cycles of violence and environmental collapse. Artists taking part in include John Akomfrah, Simone Leigh, Wangechi Mutu, Michael Rakowitz and Hiroshi Sugimoto.

The title of the triennial’s sixth edition is borrowed from a line by the Syrian poet Adonis, writing in the wake of the Six-Day War of 1967, during which Israel defeated a coalition of neighbouring countries and gained control of areas including the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Eastern Jerusalem. The conflict resulted in destabilisation across the region as pan-Arabism declined. The full passage reads:

How can withered trees blossom?
A time between ashes and roses is coming
When everything shall be extinguished
When everything shall begin again

“I wanted to bring it into that kind of context, but also make it poetic. I like to think poetry translates in a way that it gets to people's emotions and also maybe opens up different angles or viewpoints,” Al Qasimi says. “This idea of renewal, looking at withering trees blossoming—nature really comes into it.”

She applied for the artistic director position long before 7 October 2023, when Hamas militants attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people, taking around 250 hostage and setting off an Israeli offensive that has now lasted nearly two years and killed an estimated 64,000 people in Gaza. Al Qasimi adds: “The timing now, with everything happening in Gaza, it’s even more poignant.”

This year also marks the 60th anniversary of the US dropping the atomic bombs that decimated Hiroshima and Nagasaki and killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Both events will be referenced in the triennial, Al Qasimi says. Both topics are controversial ones—institutions across the world have been criticised for allegedly censoring work and projects that address the devastation wrought in Gaza by Israel. The Aichi Triennale has had its own issues with censorship in the past. Nearly a dozen artists involved in the 2019 edition pulled their work from the show after organisers shuttered a section of the exhibition that referenced comfort women, who had been forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese army during the Second World War. The triennial's leadership said the display was closed as a safety precaution after organisers received multiple death threats. The section was later reopened on a lottery basis.

Al Qasimi says she has not encountered any issues of potential censorship in the leadup to this year’s triennial, which is partially funded by the Japanese government. The exhibition is opening in a politically volatile climate in Japan: the country's Prime Minister, Ishiba Shigeru, announced earlier this week that he would step down after a crushing mid-term election loss. The next leader will be Japan's fourth prime minister in five years.

“There is this openness to talk about these things, and wanting to do it from a place of understanding,” Al Qasimi says. “The triennial is not here to cause issues, but at the same time, we need to be able to express things to the public so that the public can also take it in.”

Alongside works engaging with the destruction in Palestine and the legacy of the atomic bomb, artists are grappling with Korean coal miners who were forced into labour for Japanese companies during the Second World War. Al Qasimi also highlights the participating artist Mayunkiki, who is a member of the Ainu Indigenous group in Japan. Ainu people, from the north of Japan, have been subjected to forced assimilation for decades and still report high levels of discrimination. A performance will also address the history of Okinawa, the country’s southernmost prefecture and home to Ryukyuans, who like the Ainu have a culture distinct from most of Japan. Despite being the country’s largest minority group, the Ryukyuans are not recognised by the Japanese government as an Indigenous group.

The artist duo of Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, both of whom are Palestinian descent, will make their debut in Japan as part of the triennial’s programming. On Friday (12 September) they performed with live music by guest musicians Barari, Julmud and Haykal, all invited to Nagoya from Palestine. They performed a DJ set in a crowded basement bar in downtown Nagoya with baselines so strong attendees could feel the floor shaking beneath their feet. The duo’s joy and charisma were contagious, and images and video and from their Aichi Triennale installation streamed as they danced and rapped in Arabic onstage.

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Al Qasimi says the triennial invites audiences to consider how to navigate the space in between the extremes of nihilism and blind optimism, and to consider connections between man-made destruction and the natural world. She points to the example of Akomfrah’s film Vertigo Sea (2015), which focuses on the ocean as both a life-sustaining place of beauty and a witness to human tragedy, from the transatlantic slave trade to the deaths of migrants at sea.

“People always talk about climate change and the environment. But you can put this into the context of man-made disasters that are happening that also affect climate change,” she adds. “People talk about sustainability and nature, but would not talk about missiles and bombs contributing to the destruction of the planet.”

• Aichi Triennale 2025: A Time Between Ashes and Roses, 13 September-30 November, various venues, Nagoya, Japan