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Programs

Sayaka Miyata / Midori Hirota

The New Museum of Wonder: The Gene of Curiosity

dates
5/8 Thu. - 6/23 mon.
※Osaka Art & Design is Wed.May.28,2025 - Tue.Jun.24,2025
hours
9:00-21:00
location
Hankyu Department Store Umeda Main Store Concourse Window / Osaka Umeda Twin Towers North 1F Concourse

Hankyu Department Store Umeda Main Store Concourse Window × Osaka Umeda Twin Towers North 1F Concourse
First-ever Co-organized Art Installation

Inspired by Ernst Haeckel’s illustrated books, as well as flora and fauna depicted on fabrics from diverse times and places, contemporary artist Sayaka Miyata portrays a world at the intersection of natural science and art, visualizing the pursuit of the mysteries of life through the technique of embroidery. She leverages her creativity to produce a natural-history-style representation of the world of fundamental human curiosity, which has remained unchanged since ancient times and will surely endure into the future. In collaboration with Midori Hirota, a sign maker and designer who energetically transcends the fields of graphic design and art, Miyata is presenting a large-scale installation for the first time, envisioning future creativity through experimental co-creation with AI, creating a resonance between the concourse and the display windows. This installation evokes the feeling of stepping into a museum of wonder, fueling your desire to explore the unknown and stimulating the gene of curiosity within you.

Artist / Brand

Sayaka Miyata (contemporary artist)

Born in Kyoto,  Miyata completed her Master’s Course in the texitiles field at the Graduate School of Art, Kyoto University of Art and Design (currently, Kyoto University of the Arts) in 2012.
Her specialization in dyeing at the graduate school led her to start creating works with her original technique of using hand and machine embroidery to increase the depth and volume of dyed cloth.
Her works include the WARP series, featuring layers of thread created by intentionally causing glitches in a sewing machine, a very common medium, and the Knots series, which is made entirely of thread with no fabric backing attached. Her works are coordination between her proprietary techniques based on the idea that errors create new values and the forms of organisms or the way phenomena happen and develop. This approach sharply distinguishes her from other contemporary artists.
Major exhibitions where she has presented her works include the Sapporo International Art Festival 2024 (Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art) and the solo exhibition “Urahara no ito wa yosuga” in 2022 (Gifu Collection of Modern Arts).

website

Midori Hirota (a sign maker and graphic designer)

After working as a graphic designer at a design office, Hirota took over Kantaro, her family’s sign-making business, as its second owner in 2015. While designing logos and visual identities for stores, brands, events, exhibitions, and the like, she also attempts to use signs as a foundation for deploying two-dimensional designs, such as hand-drawn lettering, drawings, and graphics, in spaces using a variety of materials and media. Under this initiative, she carries out all the steps of design, production, and installation on her own. As an original project to pursue the potential of signs as a medium, she held “Signs & Beyond” in 2017 (Mimiyama Mishin, Osaka) and in 2020 (Mura Cekai, Tokyo). She also aims to promote sign-painting techniques, which are currently on the decline.

website

Concept&Direction:Code-a-Machine(Kodama　Kanazawa+Shinichiro Masui)
Window background drawing cooperation:Sawano Enami

Gallery

Osaka Umeda Twin Towers North 1F Concourse


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〒530-8350
8-1,Kakuda-cho,Kita-ku,Osaka

website

Hankyu Department Store Umeda Main Store Concourse Window


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〒530-8350
8-7,Kakuda-cho,Kita-ku,Osaka

website