Born 1958 in Tokyo; based in Tokyo. Completed the master's degree program in sculpture at Musashino Art University in 1983. She was awarded the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology's Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists in 2000 - her work featured the same year in a solo exhibition at the Meguro Museum of Art - and the Teijiro Nakahara Prize in 2003. Aoki has been working with steel as a material since the early 1980s. Torch-cutting sheet metal and then welding together the pieces, she creates simple, large-scale works, characterized by their sense of openness, that stunningly dispel the image of steel as a heavy material and of sculpture as a solid object. Not only in gallery spaces, but outdoors as well, by embracing time and the air around them, her works transform the places where they are installed.

Junya IshigamiBorn 1974 in Kanagawa Prefecture; based in Tokyo.
Completed the master's degree program in architecture at Tokyo University of the Arts in 2000. Starting his career with Kazuyo Sejima and Associates, he established his own practice in 2004. Ishigami garnered attention from the art world with balloon, a one-ton, floating metal volume he created for the 2007 exhibition "Space for you future" held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. He showed solo in the Japanese pavilion at the 11th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2008; received the 2009 Architectural Institute of Japan Prize for the Kanagawa Institute of Technology KAIT Workshop and the Golden Lion for Best Project at the 12th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2010; and staged solo exhibitions at the Shiseido Gallery and Toyota Municipal Museum of Art later the same year. Continually pushing the possibilities of architecture with the spaces and structures he realizes based on audacious ideas, Ishigami is now widely regarded as one of Japan's most promising young architects.

Born 1959 in Aomori Prefecture; based in Tokyo. Graduated from Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music in 2005, and completed the master's degree program in 2007. He entered the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1988, remaining in Germany until he returned to Japan in August 2000. Nara has been showing his work in Nagoya - among other places - on a regular basis since the mid-1990s, and received the City of Nagoya Arts Award in 1995. He was guest professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) for three months in 1998 and for the 2006 school year at Musashino Art University. He has staged numerous solo exhibitions throughout Japan and abroad. With works in major collections around the world, including New York's Museum of Modern Art, Nara is considered one of the most important figures in Japanese contemporary art. Although he is best known for his drawings and paintings featuring children with piercing gazes, between his architectural collaborations with the design team graf and his recent forays into ceramics, he continues to introduce new ventures into his practice.