The Easel

10th November 2026

Yoshitomo Nara’s Big-Headed Girls Are Taking Over New York

Erin Ikeuchi | Hypebeast | 8th November 2026

The volume of Nara merch is so big, one reviewer comments, that it can obscure his artistic achievements. He does not try to satirise Japanese consumer culture but offers cuteness as “an expression of authentic feeling”. Over the years, those feelings ranged widely – anger, loneliness, “punk insouciance”. Now, his girls are a little mellower and show a social conscience. New sculptures also seem softer, painted metal with contours like soft ice-cream. “Nara is an artist of a generation”.

Mariko Mori predicted the future. She’ll do it again

Victoria Bennett | The Japan Times | 6th November 2026

Mori’s art sounds so characteristically Japanese. Her early, mid-1990s works focused on anime, pop culture and the role of women in Japanese society, but soon she began paying attention to technology. Later performance and installation works blurred the boundary between technology and self, anticipating avatars well before social media. Subsequent works including sensors projecting viewers brain activity onto large displays, place Mori at “the cutting edge of art, technology and consciousness”.

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