Hiroshima MoCA FIVE 25/26

Period 2025.6.1(Sun) — 2026.3.1(Sun)

[Application Period] June 1—July 25, 2025
[Exhibition Period] December 20,2025—March 1, 2026

Outline
Application
Schedule
Selection Results
Special Jury Statement
Archive

Outline

Since opening in 1989, the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art has regularly held an open-call exhibition designed to support the creative activities of artists. Over the years, the exhibition has been revamped on several occasions to provide visitors with an enhanced viewing experience. The most recent iteration was launched in 2023 under the title “Hiroshima MoCA FIVE.”
For the 2025-26 edition, five artists will be selected by the museum’s curators and a panel of judges, and invited to produce and display their works in a museum-supported exhibition.

Application

Theme: Memories

〇 The theme of Hiroshima MoCA FIVE 25/26 is "memories.” Memories are closely connected to personal experiences, environments, and history, and they are open to a wide range of interpretations. We look forward to your proposal for a work imbued with creative freedom and ambitious expression in accordance with the event theme.
〇 There are no restrictions regarding media or material. Painting, sculpture, video, installation, performance, and other media are acceptable, as are wood, metal, ceramic, and other materials.
〇 All works, with the exception of performance pieces, must be displayed throughout the exhibition period. Performance-based works should be staged on the first day of the exhibition and designed in such a way that visitors can view them for the remainder of the event.
〇 Each artist or group is only allowed one proposal.
〇 The proposal must be for an original and never before exhibited work.
〇 The door to the museum's loading dock is approximately 2.7 meters wide and 4 meters high. For especially large or heavy works, please contact us in advance. In addition, please ensure that the work and display means are feasible and safe.
〇 Selected works will be exhibited in Gallery B-2 and B-3.

Flyer
Application Procedure
Application Form
Application Form [Excel]

GalleryB-2

Plan

GalleryB-3

Plan

How to Apply

Download the application guidelines and application form from the following website.
After filling out the forms, submit them online or by post. Direct submissions will not be accepted.
Direct submissions will not be accepted.

Sunday, June 1, 2025—17:00 JST on Friday, July 25 (must arrive within the application period)

Application Form - Receipt of Applications Ended

[Postal address]
Hiroshima MoCA FIVE 25/26
Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art
1-1 Hijiyama-koen, Minami-ku, Hiroshima 732-0815

Eligibility

Anyone is free to apply.

Participating Fee

- No fee is required.

Selection

Proposals will be screened by museum curators and a judging panel. The special judging panel will be overseen by Hiroyuki Hattori (Associate Professor, Graduate School, Tokyo University of the Arts; Director, Aomori Contemporary Art Centre [ACAC]).

Results will be announced on the museum’s website in early October, 2025.

Award

〇Five artists (or groups) will be selected. Each award includes 400,000 JPY.
〇The Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art Award and the Special Judging Panel Award: These awards will be presented to one artist or group by the judges after the works are installed. Each award includes 200,000 JPY.
〇Images of the exhibition will be provided to the selected artists.

Making the Exhibition

〇Artists will discuss the manner in which their work will be exhibited with the museum curators.
〇Artists (or someone appointed by the artist) will be responsible for installing and dismantling the work with some assistance from the museum.
〇Artists are responsible for preparing the necessary equipment to exhibit their work; i.e., frames, pedestals, video equipment, etc.
〇The museum will provide information on local hotels if the artist needs to stay in Hiroshima during the installation period. Please contact the museum in advance.
〇As a general rule, installation and display work will be carried out between Mon., Dec. 15 and Fri., Dec. 19, 2025 from 9:00AM to 5:00PM. Large materials and noisy work will be carried on Mon., Dec. 15, when the museum facility is closed. Moreover, the removal of materials will be carried out on Sun., March 1, 2026 from 5:00PM to 9:00PM, and Mon. March 2, 2026 from 9:00AM to 5:00PM.

In cooperation with

Guest House akicafe inn

Schedule

1
Announcement
May 23, 2025
2
Application Form
June 1—July 25, 2025
3
Result
In early October, 2025

Result will be announced on the museum website.
4
Installation
December 15—19, 2025
5
Exhibition
December 20, 2025—March 1, 2026
6
Dismantling
March 1—2, 2026

Selection Results

After an in-house selection process by the director, deputy director, and curators of the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, and a special selection by Mr. Hattori Hiroyuki (Associate Professor, Graduate School, Tokyo University of the Arts; Director, Aomori Contemporary Art Centre [ACAC]), the following five artists/groups were selected from among the 280 entries received.

Itai Minako, Shintaro exists- and that dog does too.　Special Jury Award

Usui Hitomi, The Branch of the Shelf, The Breath of the Pillar, Trees with Kezurikake 　Hiroshima MoCA Award

Uruno Kei, 40rooms

Kuwana Sae, Nagasaka Emu, Our cloud chamber.

Hong Jun-Yuan, YiFang—The Return of Memory

Exhibiton "Hiroshima MoCA FIVE 25/26"

Special Jury Statement

In its second year, Hiroshima MoCA FIVE 2025 received applications from 280 artists responding to the theme of “Memory,” with five ultimately selected. The 80th anniversary of World War II’s end and the city of Hiroshima served as key points of reference for engaging with this theme, and many proposals addressed it in one form or another, either directly or indirectly.
Uruno Kei’s work, whose sound carries beyond the exhibition space, takes the form of a pipe organ, linking 40 rooms of different sizes into a layered spatial structure that brings to mind Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s The Prisons series. Each room is fitted with connected pipes and fans, but when all the fans are operating the sound level becomes overwhelming, so in practice roughly half are kept switched off. While the work is extraordinarily polished in terms of construction, its inability to operate at full capacity left me wishing for a clearer explanation for the choice of 40 rooms and a more direct engagement with the theme of memory.
Taiwan-based Hong Jun-Yuan traced the path of his wife’s grandfather, who lived in Hiroshima during the period of Japanese rule, and examined the wartime experiences and memories of Taiwanese atomic bomb survivors. Over several years and repeated visits to Hiroshima, he produced a dense and complex installation comprising the semi-documentary video YiFang, in which his wife’s father performs the role of her grandfather; the essay film backlit, which follows her grandfather’s 1,680-kilometer journey while layering photographs and archival materials accompanied by the artist’s narration; and a range of documents and interviews. Focusing on the wartime experiences and atomic bomb memories of Taiwanese people in Hiroshima, a subject that has rarely been addressed, makes this project well matched to an open-call exhibition of this kind. At the same time, the limited scale of the exhibition space and the volume of information presented made it difficult to grasp the work as a whole.
Upon entering Usui Hitomi’s installation, the tone shifts to a brighter setting, enveloped in a calm and poised atmosphere. Usui borrowed implements that Hiroshima residents no longer use and, through the technique of Kezurikake, carved away parts of each object, negating its original function as a tool while giving it a renewed sense of living energy. After the exhibition, the tools are returned to their original owners, allowing memory to be passed on. This project addresses questions that contemporary society needs to consider—how things are brought to an end, how they are set aside, and how they can be renewed— and it holds clear value as a shared undertaking. I look forward to broader forms of engagement from this artist in the future.
Using a diffusion cloud chamber, Kuwana Sae and Nagasaka Emu made radiation within the exhibition space visible and captured it on video. Alongside this footage, they presented a group of plaster sculptures that they jointly modeled based on fleeting moments of radiation that disappear within seconds, as well as a large net-like sculptural form woven using fishing-net techniques, as if to catch what slips away. Radiation is often envisioned as a set of straight lines, but by focusing on the instant of disappearance, the artists gave tangible form to its rich, organic qualities, creating a setting that elicits reflection on memory at a planetary scale through the presence of radiation. Their collaborative approach, in which each artist brings their individual strengths and superimposes them together, showed clear potential for continuation and further development.
Hiroshima-based Itai Minako has carried out a wide range of activities in the large public housing complex where she lives, a 50-year-old high-rise apartment building home to residents of many generations and nationalities. For this exhibition, she brought into the museum numerous objects of unclear ownership that past residents had left behind over many years in the complex’s underground storage areas. She then presented a performance in which memorable episodes she had heard as head of the neighborhood association were allowed to inhabit her, as she not only recounted the stories but also channeled the speakers’ manner of speech and gestures as if possessed. This public housing complex has qualities that could warrant preservation as a cultural asset, while at the same time it is a place marked by aging infrastructure and a range of social challenges. Itai responds to the issues faced by residents with humor and creativity, attempting to transform them into value for the future. Rather than simply engaging with contemporary issues, her practice seeks to guide memories of the past toward future possibilities, and while much remains unknown about how this will be achieved, it shows considerable promise and offers a hopeful vision of art as a way of shaping a better life.
Looking back at the exhibition as a whole, a wide range of techniques, materials, and media were brought together, from sculpture and craft-based methods to video and project-based practices. Many of the works incorporated sound, and artists of varying ages and career stages intermingled in complex ways. This could easily have resulted in an exhibition in which the works competed with one another and asserted themselves too strongly, but instead it formed a rich setting in which disparate elements respected one another’s presence and resonated together. I imagined that the artists developed positive relationships with one another, making the exhibition a productive and rewarding site for each of them. It was an exhibition in which the unexpected encounters and delightful overlaps characteristic of an open-call exhibition were fully on view.

Hattori Hiroyuki
Curator
Associate Professor, Tokyo University of the Arts
Director, Aomori Contemporary Art Centre

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Finished