Filtering by: NAFAS Tokyo
Become a Collector: Acquire a NAFAS Artwork
Aug
21
to Sep 26

Become a Collector: Acquire a NAFAS Artwork

Buying a work of art is more than acquiring an object. It is a gesture of trust, in an artist, in an idea, in the importance of keeping artistic creation alive.

NAFAS Tokyo brings together 57 visual artists from Japan and around the world, working across painting, photography, sculpture, drawing, video and site-specific installation. Each work carries its own story, material, gesture and way of looking at food and the world around us.

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NAFAS Artist Residency / Cal Stalvig
Aug
30
to Sep 11

NAFAS Artist Residency / Cal Stalvig

Cal Stalvig will contribute to NAFAS festival by bringing the ancient and sacred magic of candlelight. Fire has long been at the heart of human social, imaginative, and spiritual life, and candles extend the tradition of the hearth—the place where people gather, share food, tell stories, perform, and find warmth.

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NAFAS Artist Residency / Sama Beydoun
Aug
31
to Sep 16

NAFAS Artist Residency / Sama Beydoun

Sama Beydoun’s Mother Tongue is an ongoing photo-based project exploring memory, migration, and matriarchy through food. It began as a personal reflection after leaving Lebanon, documenting the relationship between generations of women in her family, and evolved into a broader investigation of transmission within the Lebanese diaspora.

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NAFAS Artist Residency / Emmanuel “Gus” Reckel
Aug
31
to Sep 26

NAFAS Artist Residency / Emmanuel “Gus” Reckel

Emmanuel “Gus” Reckel is a baker, educator, and culinary artist who approaches food through wild fermentation, traditional nutrition, and hospitality. For Gus, food isn't just sustenance—it's a hands-on way to bring people together, share stories, and explore plant-based eating.

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NAFAS Tokyo: Exhibition and Festival
Sep
4
to Sep 26

NAFAS Tokyo: Exhibition and Festival

NAFAS is both exhibition and gathering. Artists from Japan and elsewhere will present new and existing works, while the festival extends beyond the gallery through community-oriented events, performances, cooking classes, film screenings, musical concerts, and conversations.

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An Essay about NAFAS TOKYO by Emil Pacha Valencia
Sep
4
to Sep 26

An Essay about NAFAS TOKYO by Emil Pacha Valencia

In her book Fade, author Ryoko Sekiguchi examines a notion that has long been associated with cuisines unfamiliar to us. She shows that when we describe a food as "bland," we reveal less about the cuisine we are judging than about the limits of our own perception. From this observation, and without lapsing into the kind of fatalism that suggests "we can never truly understand," or that such understanding is "reserved for connoisseurs," Sekiguchi offers a hopeful perspective: to truly grasp a cuisine, we must first unlearn our own culinary "grammar" and approach it with the humility, but also the optimism, of someone learning an unfamiliar language.

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エミル・パチャ・バレンシアによる『NAFAS TOKYO』に関するエッセイ
Sep
4
to Sep 26

エミル・パチャ・バレンシアによる『NAFAS TOKYO』に関するエッセイ

「多くの物事と同様に、味や料理も、一度味わっただけで判断できるものではない(……)。新しい味や調理法、それまで知らなかった味の組み合わせ等に初めて出会うと、人はいつも戸惑ってしまう。それを表現する言葉が見つからないのだ。」著書『Fade(味気ない)』の中で、作家の関口涼子は、長い間、馴染みのない料理と結びつけられてきたこの概念に注目し、ある食べ物を「味気ない」と評することが、評価対象の料理そのものについてではなく、むしろ私たち自身の限界について物語っていることを明らかにします。この事実を踏まえ、「理解できない」とか「通だけのもの」といった一種の宿命論に陥ることなく、著者は希望に満ちた展望を提示します。ある料理の本質を捉えるためには、私たち自身の食の「文法」から脱却し、未知の言語を学ぶ者の持つ謙虚さ そして希望 を持って歩みを進める必要があるのです。

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Gaze Material / Kiyoshiro Tatekawa 立川清志楼
Sep
4
7:30 PM19:30

Gaze Material / Kiyoshiro Tatekawa 立川清志楼

What do we really see when we look at animals in a zoo? Are we observing another species or are we confronting reflections of ourselves? Perhaps the zoo does not simply preserve the past of humanity, but reveals its present, and even hints at its future.

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Omusubi's Birth Party / Cooking Club / Karin + Miki 畝本花凛 + 畝本 果林
Sep
5
2:30 PM14:30

Omusubi's Birth Party / Cooking Club / Karin + Miki 畝本花凛 + 畝本 果林

Omusubi can be a meal or a quick snack. A brand-new omusubi will be born, using flavors and textures connected to Japan, Brazil, and Egypt. This will be a time to make omusubi, eat together, and listen to the stories behind the rice and ingredients.

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4.5 Ways of Appreciation / Yu Ohara 大原 由
Sep
6
5:00 PM17:00

4.5 Ways of Appreciation / Yu Ohara 大原 由

4.5 Ways of Appreciation by Yu Ohara is a performance that physically explores four approaches to the reception of art through tasting: the Japanese concepts of “鑑賞 kanshō,” “観照 kanshō,” and “賞玩 shōgan,” and the Chinese concept of “品鑑 pinjian.”

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Waterproof Food Packaging Workshop / Tara de la Garza
Sep
12
3:00 PM15:00

Waterproof Food Packaging Workshop / Tara de la Garza

  • BUoY Arts Center / Basement (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Join California-based artist Tara de la Garza for a hands-on workshop exploring the creative potential of discarded plastic bags and packaging. Tara’s artistic practice is dedicated to reimagining single-use plastics, transforming everyday waste into objects of beauty and reflection.

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Script Dinner: NAFAS Edition / Shinoda Chiharu 篠田千明
Sep
19
6:00 PM18:00

Script Dinner: NAFAS Edition / Shinoda Chiharu 篠田千明

Each guest arrives with two ingredients. From this unexpected collection, the group imagines a menu, cooks, and shares a meal together. Throughout the evening, participants take turns documenting what unfolds, from the first gestures in the kitchen to the conversations and encounters around the table.

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Mari Katayama 片山 真理 Makes Cookies
Sep
20
1:00 PM13:00

Mari Katayama 片山 真理 Makes Cookies

On Sundays, artist Mari Katayama likes to bake cookies at home with her daughter.

On this special Sunday, Mari comes to BUoY with her daughter and her own oven, the only one she trusts. Together, they will bake cookies in the café and offer them to the public.

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Takenoko Lab - Eat, Listen, Feel / Chatori Shimizu 清水チャートリー./ devon osamu tipp ティップ・治
Sep
20
6:00 PM18:00

Takenoko Lab - Eat, Listen, Feel / Chatori Shimizu 清水チャートリー./ devon osamu tipp ティップ・治

Takenoko Lab is an experimental performance designed around the concepts of bamboo as food, and bamboo woodwind instruments (shō, shakuhachi).This experimental event will allow participants to physically experience the process by which a single bamboo stalk transforms from a bamboo shoot (food) underground, to a musical instrument like the sho or shakuhachi above ground, and finally to sound produced by human breath.

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Café Mizuumi みずうみ to Eat Words
Sep
23
3:00 PM15:00

Café Mizuumi みずうみ to Eat Words

  • BUoY Arts Center Basement (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

In an age where words are constantly produced, consumed, and forgotten—where endless streams of information and artificial intelligence threaten to overwhelm our own voices, Café Mizuumi to Eat Words invites visitors to slow down and savor language, one word at a time.

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Furicha: Free Live + Experience Session / Fuku Sakuma 茶久間 ふく/ Hinanako Ichihara 市原 一七子
Sep
24
7:15 PM19:15

Furicha: Free Live + Experience Session / Fuku Sakuma 茶久間 ふく/ Hinanako Ichihara 市原 一七子

Furicha Free Live + Furicha Experience Session is a live performance and participatory workshop inspired by Japan’s traditional foamed-tea culture. Combining the rhythmic sounds and movements of whisking tea with electronic music, projections, and audience participation, the project reimagines the social and sensory traditions of Furicha in contemporary Tokyo.

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NAFAS Guests: Hélène Deléan / Clément Caignart
Sep
25
6:00 PM18:00

NAFAS Guests: Hélène Deléan / Clément Caignart

in partnership with Institut Français du Japon / Villa Kujoyama, we invite artists Hélène Deléan and Clément Caignart for an informal presentation of their current research project N88DL, a speculative fiction that takes shape around the invention, by Momofuku Ando in Osaka in 1958, of instant noodles.

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Carte Blanche to Julie Dind
Sep
26
9:00 AM09:00

Carte Blanche to Julie Dind

  • BUoY Arts Center / Basement (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

For the final day of NAFAS Tokyo, Julie Dind presents an eleven-hour durational performance exploring food, ritual, time, and collective experience.

Alone at the heart of BUoY’s vast concrete basement—a raw, cavernous space whose material weight seems to hold both silence and memory—the artist’s solitary presence becomes at once fragile and persistent.

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Call For Artists / NAFAS Festival / Tokyo
Feb
11
to Apr 30

Call For Artists / NAFAS Festival / Tokyo

The Invisible Dog (New York) and BUoY Arts Center (Tokyo) are launching a call to artists for NAFAS, a Tokyo month-long festival in September 2026 where art and food share the same table, and where audiences are invited to savor multiple artistic propositions.

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