Hibiya Art Park 2026 - Timeless Phenomena

For seventeen days in November, works by three artists are placed through Hibiya Park in the middle of Tokyo. They are not gathered in one spot: each stands where it belongs in the park, and a visitor comes upon them while walking. The programme is run by the city government, which has been putting on displays of flowers and lights in its parks through the year, and this is the third year that art has been added at Hibiya.

The idea

The park is the subject as much as the setting. It opened in 1903 on ground that had held the residences of daimyo, and was the first park in Japan laid out in the western manner. It has stood in the centre of the city for more than 120 years, keeping a slower kind of time than the streets around it.

The title given to this year's programme is "Timeless Phenomena". The director's stated aim is to set aside the clock for a while and let the visitor notice the other times the park keeps: the sun moving, the trees growing, the flowers coming round with the season. The flowers are treated as part of the work rather than as decoration.

The artists

Takashi Kuribayashi, born in Nagasaki in 1968, has worked on the theme of boundaries for thirty years, between nature and people, water and land, the seen and the unseen. He shows a piece from his Genkiro series.

Rui Sasaki, born in Kochi in 1984, works in glass, a material that keeps what is put into it, and uses it to hold what she calls a faint nostalgia for the places she has been.

Taiki Yokote, born in 1998 and trained in sculpture in Tokyo, works from the small things that move a person without being spoken, and from what is easy to miss.

The programme is directed by the architect Yuko Nagayama, with Kensho Tanbara as curatorial collaborator. Food is sold in the park on some days during the run.