Mika Ninagawa

with EiM

Alive with shadows

Born in Tokyo in 1972, Mika Ninagawa weaves a body of work at the crossroads of contemporary imagination and Japanese aesthetic memory. In her images, nature emerges where one least expects it, captured in the midst of urban turmoil or carefully framed within spaces shaped by human hands — gardens, bouquets, artificial flowers… Vibrant petals, suspended butterflies, drifting goldfish and fragments of cities form a fragile constellation, in which each motif becomes a mirror of a beauty destined to vanish.

From Tokyo to Taipei, from Venice to Rouen, his artistic universe—which blends photography, moving image works, and hand-crafted as well as readymade objects—is presented in major international institutions. In France, it has notably found expression through Florae for Van Cleef & Arpels (2021), at the Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles (2024), and as part of Normandie Impressionniste (2026).

In her work, the radiance of beauty is inseparable from its loss, and the vibrant colour carries within it a gentle, almost whispered melancholy.Photography, then, becomes a way of holding on to what slips away, of offering the eye the illusion of a preserved moment. But her work is not limited to still images. Mika Ninagawa, together with EiM, her collective of associate artists, creates lush, almost surreal environments where digital art, moving projections and crystallised forms intermingle. These enveloping spaces, the product of a sensibility shaped by the theatre — which she discovered as a child through her father, the theatre director Yukio Ninagawa — invite you to step into a living, sensory and deeply immersive experience. It is no longer simply a matter of seeing, but of feeling, of passing through it as if in meditation.

Whilst his compositions burst with saturated, contrasting colours – the instantly recognisable hallmark of his visual language – this exhibition also reveals more intimate nuances and the more hidden dimensions of his work. Another voice can be heard here: perhaps more fragile, but just as luminous. Alive with Shadows evokes the shadows that inhabit and shape us, just as much as light does, the way we exist in the world.

 I know that everything comes to an end. And it is precisely because I am aware of this finitude that I ardently desire to continue bringing these fleeting—and yet miraculous—moments to life.

Mika Ninagawa

Curators

Lena Fritsch - Independent curator, author, art historian

Exhibition Design: Atelier Tsuyoshi Tane Architects

Global Tour sponsor : Hiroyuki Maki