osaka art & design 2025 highlights: immersive installations and exhibitions energize the city

FOUR WEEKS OF CREATIVE IMMERSION AT OSAKA ART & DESIGN 2025

Returning for its third edition, Osaka Art & Design transforms the city into an urban-scale showcase of creativity from May 28 to June 24, 2025. Expanding its footprint to around 60 venues, the event connects a rich network of art, design, and architecture across Umeda, Nakanoshima, Shinsaibashi, Namba, and the newly added Abeno district, turning Osaka into a walkable museum of contemporary culture. Visitors can encounter a broad range of artworks, design objects, and fashion pieces, with several works available for purchase across galleries, department stores, and public spaces.

Taking place alongside EXPO 2025 Osaka, OAD 2025  positions the city as a dynamic stage for global cultural dialogue. Under the theme ‘Overlaps —Where Passions Encounter,’ the program unites emerging and established talents from Japan and abroad through large-scale installations, exhibitions, and cross-disciplinary showcases. Highlights include a collaborative installation by Sayaka Miyata and Mirodi Hirota, spanning the north-to-south concourse of Osaka Umeda Twin Towers North and the windows of Hankyu Department Store, as well as a special presentation by fashion designer Joanna Hawrot, organized by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute of Poland.

Osaka Art & Design 2025 key visual | all images courtesy of Osaka Art & Design

YOKAI UNITY

Blending folklore with playful urban interventions, this installation reimagines yokai — traditional Japanese spirits — through a colorful, pop-inspired lens. Emerging unexpectedly from city gaps, the creatures animate Osaka’s streets with humor and mystery, while a sculptural form based on the Hokkai Jo-in mudra adds a contemplative layer of compassion and coexistence.

exhibition period: May 28 – June 10, 2025

location: Nankai Namba Station 2F Concourse

participating creators: Maki Takato

Yokai Unity by Maki Takato

HAWROT: WEARABLE ART – UNSEEN THREADS

Joanna Hawrot’s Unseen Threads exhibition explores womanhood through wearable art, blending Polish textile traditions with Japanese kimono culture. Presented alongside portraits by photographer Zuza Krajewska, the works spotlight Japanese and Polish women wearing Hawrot’s designs, weaving personal stories into a cross-cultural celebration of identity, diversity, and contemporary femininity.

exhibition period: May 31 – June 24, 2025

location: Daimaru Shinsaibashi

participating creators: Joanna Hawrot

HAWROT: Wearable Art – Unseen Threads by Joanna Hawrot | image © Zuza Krajewska

THE NEW MUSEUM OF WONDER: THE GENE OF CURIOSITY

Inspired by Ernst Haeckel’s illustrations and global textile motifs, artist Sayaka Miyata embroiders a poetic fusion of natural science and art. In collaboration with designer Midori Hirota, she unveils a large-scale installation across Osaka Umeda Twin Towers North, merging handcraft and AI to spark curiosity and evoke the atmosphere of a museum of wonder.

exhibition period: May 8 – June 23, 2025

location: Osaka Umeda Twin Towers North 1F Concourse

participating creators: Sayaka Miyata and Midori Hirota

NEW COLLECTION

Charlotte Perriand designed the Indochine Chaise Longue in 1943 while serving as Director of Crafts in Vietnam. Confined to bed late in her pregnancy, she created a rattan chaise longue with armrests to continue reading, writing, and designing despite wartime steel shortages. Since 2004, Cassina has expanded the Charlotte Perriand collection in close collaboration with Perriand’s daughter, Pernette Perriand-Barsac. To mark the collection’s 20th anniversary in 2024, Cassina will introduce a newly industrialized model, celebrating Perriand’s enduring creative legacy.

exhibition period: May 28 – June 24, 2025

location: Cassina ixc. Osaka shop

participating creators: Cassina

New Collection by Cassina

ONE MILLION PEOPLE’S CANDLE NIGHT

‘One Million People’s Candle Night in Osaka City: Chayamachi Slow Day’ softly illuminates the Umeda district each summer with candlelight art and quiet charm. In 2025, under the theme “Miracle,” installations, candle-lined streets, and artist-made works invite visitors to reflect, connect, and wander through a glowing cityscape. Highlights include the Candle Market, live music at select venues, and a collective lights-off moment from 8 to 10 p.m., offering a peaceful pause from everyday life.

exhibition period: June 5, 2025

location: the entire Chayamachi area, Umeda

SENSE OF WONDER

At Marco Gallery, Joe Takahashi presents a solo exhibition titled Sense of Wonder – Yugen, offering a sculptural exploration of gravity as a timeless, universal force. Centering his practice on themes such as plant life, rotation, horizons, and light, Takahashi creates spatial compositions that subtly distort perception. His works invite contemplation of natural phenomena through abstract forms, drawing viewers into a nuanced interplay between material presence and conceptual depth.

exhibition period: May 31 – June 29, 2025

location: Marco Gallery

participating creators: Joe Takahashi

Sense of Wonder by Joe Takahashi

THE GLITCH

Akira Terada, the first fully digital artist to win the Gallery Seek Award at the 3rd ARTIST NEW GATE, presents a solo exhibition showcasing his distinctive visual language. Without using any physical tools, Terada transforms everyday landscapes by flipping and rotating photographs, creating unexpected, imaginative scenes that challenge conventional perspectives.

exhibition period: June 4 – June 10, 2025

location: Kintetsu Main Store Abeno Harukas

participating creators: Akira Terada

Holographic Divers(c)ity-4 | image © Akira Terada

THE SOUND OF BEGINNING, THE SOUND OF ENDING. – ILLUSTRATED ALPHABET

Inspired by the question, ‘What would letters look like if they started to dance?,’ this work captures a single hiragana character spinning rapidly in 360 degrees. The result is a striking visual that gives motion, depth, and delicate form to a flat symbol, expanding the expressive potential of written language.

exhibition period: June 11 – June 24, 2025

location: Osaka Takashimaya Department Store

participating creators: Katsunari Shishido

The sound of beginning, the sound of ending. – Illustrated alphabet by Katsunari Shishido

project info: 

name: Osaka Art & Design 2025:  Overlaps —Where Passions Encounter
areas: Umeda, Dojima, Nakanoshima, Kyomachibori, Honmachi, Shinsaibashi, Namba, Abeno, and other areas in Osaka
dates: May 28 – June 24, 2025