5 niche places to see art in Tokyo

Beyond well-known venues like Mori Art Museum and National Art Centre Tokyo, here are five niche places to see art in Tokyo.

- Shawn Hoo

1. SPACE UN TOKYO

Founded in 2024, this is the only gallery in Tokyo dedicated to promoting contemporary African art and cultural exchange between Africa and Japan. The gallery - a short walk from Meiji Jingu Gaien - invites four artists every year for a residency programme in Nara that will culminate in a solo exhibition.

So far, it has staged shows by the likes of Cameroonian artist Barthelemy Toguo and Senegalese artist Aliou Diack. The gallery has also organised a month-long celebration of Africa's cultures with film nights, an Ethiopian coffee ceremony workshop and a talk on how African art arrived in Tokyo.

On display till Dec 26 is a group exhibition on freedom by London-based curator Ekow Eshun titled The Clearing, inspired by a scene in American novelist Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987). The texturally resplendent show ranges from British-Nigerian artist Sola Olulode's batik and hand-painted canvases to Nigerian artist Nengi Omuku's oil painting on sanyan, an earthy fabric woven from the fibres of the Anaphe moth cocoon.

Where: KLO Minami-Aoyama Bldg. 1F, 2-4-9 Minamiaoyama, Minato-ku

When: Wednesdays to Sundays, noon to 7pm

Info: www.spaceun.tokyo

2. MUJIN-TO PRODUCTION

Tokyo houses its fair share of contemporary art galleries in older buildings, including the renowned SCAI The Bathhouse in a public bathhouse from more than two centuries ago.

Mujin-to Production is a gallery located in a former cardboard factory built in 1948, and much of its existing beams and concrete are from the original structure.