Hiraki Sawa

1977　Born in Ishikawa, Japan

2003　MFA in Sculpture, Slade School of Fine Art, University College London

Lives and works in London and Kanazawa

Hiraki Sawa, based between London and Kanazawa, creates works that combine moving image with sculptural and two-dimensional elements. While studying sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, he encountered animation software by chance through helping a friend, which led to his first video work dwelling (2002). The piece, featuring model airplanes flying around a small apartment room, was highly acclaimed and brought him to prominence. Subsequent works such as elsewhere (2003) and trail (2005) continued to stage toys, stationery, and the shadows of animals within everyday interiors, producing worlds in which reality and fiction intersect.

Since silts (2009), Sawa has expanded his practice into multi-screen installations incorporating sculptural and two-dimensional components, creating environments where moving images and exhibition space mutually resonate. In absent (2018), hybrid entities such as winged spoons and animated scissors appear, transforming familiar landscapes into the uncanny. Memoria Paralela (2019) extends from his earlier diptych did I? (2011) and Lineament (2012), which reflected on memory and consciousness through the story of a friend who suffered amnesia. Unlike these earlier works, Memoria Paralela unfolds from Sawa’s own perspective, shifting the narrative axis.

In /home (2021), presented in a solo exhibition, Sawa flew small airplanes within the ruins of his demolished childhood home. Unlike the toy planes in dwelling, which launched his career almost two decades earlier, this act reads as a resolute declaration of the artist’s continued engagement with themes of time, place, memory, and consciousness that have remained central throughout his practice. In addition to video, Sawa has been actively producing works on paper, such as drawings and collages. His IOTA series (2016) incorporates photographs from his grandmother’s albums, transformed into stamp-like images and overlaid with white ink patterns, reconstructing an imagined past. Sawa’s worlds—strangely similar yet unlike our own—invite the viewer into an expanded field of imagination.

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2025　Journeys in Place, Asia Society, New York

2022　flown, Parafin, London

2021　/home, Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo

2019　MEMORIA PARALELA, Museo Universidad de Navarra, Spain

2018　Latent image revealed, KAAT Kanagawa Arts Theatre, Kanagawa, Japan

2014　Under the Box, Beyond the Bounds, Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo

2003　Hiraki Sawa, Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo

Selected Group Exhibitions

2025　Taipei Biennial, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei

2025　fragment, Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo

2023　Dreamhome: Stories of Art and Shelter, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

2022　Travelers: Stepping into the Unknown, Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum, Tokyo

2020　30th Anniversary Exhibition: Two Madokas—Collection × Five Artists, Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art, Chiba, Japan

2019　Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2019, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Tokyo

Selected Collections

21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan

Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Aichi, Japan

Arts Council Collection, Hayward Gallery, London, United Kingdom

Centro de Arte Caja de Burgos, Burgos, Spain

Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI, USA

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., USA

The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel

Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN, USA

The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, TX, USA

Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan

Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, León, Spain

Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA, USA

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, USA

National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

Norton Family Collection, Santa Monica, CA, USA

Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia

Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, MO, USA

Takamatsu City Museum of Art, Kagawa, Japan

Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan

UBS Art Collection, Zurich, Switzerland

Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, USA