A post-apocalyptic vision in an abandoned school, artworks in a bathhouse, a monumental installation in a clay-mining company’s warehouse—and works by Hiroshi Sugimoto, the newly named Golden Lion winner Simone Leigh, Izumi Kato, and Osamu Tezuka—are all part of the sixth Aichi Triennale, which opened in Japan on September 14, 2025. The exhibition presents sixty-two groups of works by artists from the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Japan.

The works are concentrated at the Aichi Arts Center in Nagoya and the Aichi Prefectural Ceramic Museum, while others are scattered across Seto, a city renowned for its thousand-year ceramic tradition. The 2025 Aichi Triennale is directed by Hoor Al Qasimi, who topped the 2024 Art Power 100 list. She is the triennale’s first non-Japanese artistic director.

“I studied Japanese twenty-five years ago and have probably been to Japan more than sixty-five times, so for me, being here is almost like being at home,” Hoor told us with a laugh. In September, we visited the ancient city of Nagoya and spoke with the artistic director, who was working at a furious pace to bring the exhibition into being; Shioko Iida, the triennale’s Japanese curatorial director; and Robert Renhui Zhao, the exhibition’s only Singaporean Chinese artist, about how the triennale responds to and reflects on the complicated relationship between contemporary human society and the environment.

The theme of the 2025 Aichi Triennale is “A Time Between Ashes and Roses,” proposed by Hoor Al Qasimi. The poetic title comes from a 1970 poem by the Syrian poet Adonis.

“I’ve always loved this title by Adonis. He wrote it after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, and it speaks of rebirth and renewal after destruction.” Hoor also asked Adonis himself whether she could use the line as the triennale’s title; the poet readily agreed. Hoor Al Qasimi in conversation with Yi Tiao Yishu. Her reason for choosing the title is closely bound to the civil wars and conflicts unfolding around the world today.

“We may not have realized before that the situation we are in now is one in which everyone can watch a terrible genocide happening on their phones. So it really does feel a little post-apocalyptic,” Hoor told us. Through the works, she primarily wanted to interpret the theme in two ways.

“First, many Indigenous or matriarchal communities are deeply connected to the land. There’s a natural, fantastical, mythological, and spiritual dimension to that. Then you see the other side: destruction and war, resource extraction, and overconsumption. We are living between these two extremes.” At the 2025 Aichi Triennale, Hiroshi Sugimoto’s work. Among the works concerning people and nature is Sugimoto’s “Animal Series,” shown in a gallery at the Aichi Arts Center. Polar bears, vultures, and monkeys appear in photographs charged with a fantastical theatricality.

In 1975, Sugimoto encountered rows of large animal specimens at the American Museum of Natural History. He was struck by the experience of life and death seeming to occupy the same space, and by the specimens’ details; he then began developing the series. At the 2025 Aichi Triennale, these works are displayed alongside oil paintings of wild animals by Ota Saburo. The two media outline the same subjects in markedly different ways, making the pairing especially suggestive.

At the 2025 Aichi Triennale, works by Mulyana. Also addressing life and death, the Indonesian fiber artist Mulyana has woven a colorful and an entirely white “ocean world” from yarn, textiles, polyester, plastic mesh, and resin. The work spreads across a vast space—from the air to the floor and walls—depicting jellyfish, coral, whale skeletons, and various fish, as if placing the viewer inside a vast, quiet underwater ecosystem.

An Indonesian artist who grew up by the sea, Mulyana witnessed the clean bays of childhood as well as waters polluted by plastic and factories. The work is a kind of elegy for her home environment, and a call to action in another form. At the 2025 Aichi Triennale, works by Robert Renhui Zhao. The Singaporean Chinese artist responds to the theme of “Ashes and Roses” with video, glass, ceramics, and branches from Singapore.

“The work I brought this time is based on the piece I showed in Singapore’s pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale, with a few small details added, including many branches from the local jungle in Singapore. Between 1800 and 1950, these woods may have been the site of a British military barracks, but because they went unused for so long, the forest quickly grew back.” Robert Renhui Zhao in conversation with Yi Tiao Yishu. As an artist whose practice centers on moving-image work, investigating jungles, wastelands, and extreme environments is itself part of his process.

In the woods, he found fragments of glass and ceramics—some turquoise, some blue, some brown—and began thinking about using natural materials to build a structure for displaying video. His fieldwork often resembles that of a scientist more than that of an artist.

“Many scientists may go somewhere carrying a question and looking for an answer. But when I go somewhere, I often want to find where the story is. Sometimes there is no question. What I want to explore is what the relationship between human beings and the natural world is in the present year, 2025,” Zhao told us. At the 2025 Aichi Triennale, a work by Adrian Villar Rojas. One of the exhibition’s most striking works is “The Poetics of the Earth,” a large-scale site-specific installation that the artist Adrian Villar Rojas spent eighteen months creating in an abandoned elementary school in Seto.

He covered Seto’s Fukagawa Elementary School with apocalyptic scenes, fires, religious totems, and collaged printed images of nature. The work extends from the school’s sinks, classrooms, kitchen, and lounge to the staircase leading to the second floor, creating an experimental microcosm in which different versions of ourselves seem to emerge, interwoven across the future, the past, and the present. At the 2025 Aichi Triennale, a work by Adrian Villar Rojas. His works are ephemeral, often removed from the site once the exhibition ends.

As a result, the work cannot be commodified, is difficult to document, and is difficult to preserve. This, too, is what the artist wants to emphasize: some things “will inevitably disappear, and perhaps were never meant to be preserved.” Villar Rojas thus asks: Can we see and understand ourselves—from a nonhuman perspective, from beyond the border, or from beyond the paths already traveled? At the 2025 Aichi Triennale, a work by Elena Damiani. Hoor told us that, at this moment, she believes it is especially important to use artworks to establish connections with people.

“That way, we can understand and see that many things are not so far away. Everything is interconnected in history. Look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki: it has been eighty years since the atomic bombs were dropped. So the connection between the turmoil and everything that happened then, and its impact on the Japanese people, and what is happening now in Palestine is also important to explore.”

“The same is true environmentally. Look at the things Indigenous peoples have been complaining about for a long time: the loss of land, resource extraction—all of these things really affect everyone. It’s a little like the butterfly effect. Something happening far away can cause change somewhere else. I think it’s important to understand that we are all connected in this way. We all live under the same sky.” At the 2025 Aichi Triennale, a work by Simone Leigh. At the 2025 Aichi Triennale, a work by Wangechi Mutu. The triennale also includes artists reflecting on their own social and cultural identities, using non-Western artistic approaches to construct their narratives. Simone Leigh, the winner of the 2024 Golden Lion, presents her signature ceramic and bronze sculptures centered on Black female identity.

The Kenyan-born artist Wangechi Mutu constructs a new sense of self through sculptures of her own head, small objects she makes for herself each year—boots and ceramic vessels among them—and video. At the 2025 Aichi Triennale, a work by Hive Earth. At the 2025 Aichi Triennale, works by Marilyn Boror Bor. The exhibition also includes spice and ceramic works by Marilyn Boror Bor.

“The works include okra, cloves, chilies, and garlic. The artist’s surname is Boror Bor, which means ‘okra’ in Arabic. So she is talking about herself. The work is autobiographical, but she is always discussing food in her work, and how food can be both personal and political.” Hoor told us that this group of works was made specifically for the Aichi Prefectural Ceramic Museum, and is therefore closely connected to the region’s ceramic traditions.

“Everyone here knows okra and ceramics. So I think this will be a wonderful commission, introducing a little political element from Guatemala through food and ceramics, while its visual elements are things we all use every day.” At the 2025 Aichi Triennale, works by Izumi Kato. At the Aichi Prefectural Ceramic Museum, a particularly popular group of works consists of small ceramic pieces, large installation sculptures, and large-scale paintings that the Japanese artist Izumi Kato made especially for the exhibition. They fill an entire secondary gallery, signaling a remarkable degree of commitment.

This also reflects one of the biennial’s most distinctive characteristics: its rootedness in place. Whether Japanese artists or artists from other cultures, all have established some connection with the local ecology through the particular places in which their works are shown. At the 2025 Aichi Triennale, Hoor said, “What I think is very important is that when people come here, they see more than an exhibition they could see anywhere else. It has to connect to the local place; otherwise, it’s the same wherever you see an exhibition, right?”

Hoor said this with a laugh. Accordingly, in working with Shioko Iida, the local curatorial director, she placed particular value on artists whose works could engage with local culture, architecture, and people. At the 2025 Aichi Triennale, works by Sasaki Rui. One of the clearest examples is a glass installation by the Japanese artist Sasaki Rui in a public bathhouse in Seto.

“The bathhouse was once owned and operated by two sisters. During the planning of the triennale, one of the sisters died of old age. But we paid tribute to them through the final presentation of the work. It’s a very personal story behind the exhibition,” Shioko Iida told us. When Hoor was surveying sites, she saw the bathhouse and was deeply moved; she suggested that a Japanese artist should be invited to create a work there.

“Because I think it’s important to understand the culture behind the bathhouse, rather than seeing it simply as a building.” At the 2025 Aichi Triennale, a work by Oki Junko. At the 2025 Aichi Triennale, a work by Robert Andrew. Another example is the work at the KASEN MINE CO venue by the Australian Indigenous artist Robert Andrew.

The work is closely connected to clay, water drops, and the factory, while its relationship to the site’s character is more subtle. “This is an operating clay-mining company, and they kindly allowed us to use their warehouse. The negotiations over the exhibition site were also interesting, because other factories or businesses in the ceramics industry might want to conceal their technologies or how their products circulate,” Shioko Iida said excitedly. “But in this case, KASEN MINE CO was very open, even making its commercial technology public through this triennale.

“I thought this might affect other ceramics-related industries, shops, factories, and the craftspeople working in ceramics in Seto. I’m very curious to see what kind of impact and effects it will produce afterward.” At the 2025 Aichi Triennale, Dala Nasser, 2025. This Aichi Triennale is also the most international in its history. Shioko Iida told us that many local restaurants and cafés had partnered with the triennale to invent new menus, drinks, and even coffees.

Shioko Iida called this a “lovely gesture.” At the same time, the Seto Mono Festival was taking place, with many people bringing ceramics they had made and displaying them at small market stalls, creating a particularly intriguing interaction with the triennale.

“I went last year and found some beautiful, unusual objects with a strong local character. And the works and artists we are presenting this time step outside the dominant Western narrative of art. By bringing so much art from other parts of the world to the triennale, I hope we can satisfy people’s curiosity about another side of the world,” Hoor said with a laugh.