Embracing Otherness at the Japan Pavilion: Ei Arakawa-Nash in Conversation
In two interviews conducted in April ahead of the 61st Venice Biennale, ARTnews JAPAN spoke with Ei Arakawa-Nash, who represents Japan with a new work centered on the figure of the “baby.” The artist discusses the project’s origins, questions of subjectivity, and decentering the self.
* This article is also available in Japanese.
“A Baby Is Not Yet Becoming Anyone”
Maya Nago (ARTnews JAPAN, hereafter MN): You’ve said that the starting point of this work lies in the experience of becoming a parent. Could you tell us more specifically which aspects of that experience, and in what ways, are connected to the work?
Ei Arakawa-Nash (hereafter EAN): I was asked to submit a proposal for the Japan Pavilion in March 2025. At that point, I was thinking about what I, as someone with American citizenship, could present in the Japan Pavilion of the Venice Biennale—in relation to Trumpian nationalism, and to the Biennale itself as a site that continues to perpetuate the structure of 19th-century nationalism (*1). At the time, my children were three months old, and I had this sense that “a baby is not yet becoming anyone.” That was the starting point—I wanted to present a work with the idea that there are numerous future possibilities for babies.
*1 The Venice Biennale consists of countries that have permanent pavilion buildings in the Giardini and those that participate by renting spaces in the Arsenale or across the city of Venice for each edition. Around 30 countries—primarily Western nations that historically formed the core of the Biennale—hold permanent pavilions, and this structure itself has long been criticized for perpetuating a 19th-century order of global power.
MN: To be honest, I personally found myself slightly arrested by that phrase, “not yet becoming anyone.” From my own experience growing up, and also as a mother, I feel that from the moment one is born—depending on which family one is born into, and what kinds of conditions are given—one is already, to some extent, defined as someone. This connects to the discourse of meritocracy as well. So I wonder whether we can really say that a baby is “not yet becoming anyone.”
EAN: I understand what you mean. There’s a book by Salman Rushdie called Midnight’s Children. It’s about a child born at the moment of India’s independence who has supernatural powers, yet even as an individual, they are swept up in politics and the nation. They cannot live freely. And on top of that, at birth, the child is accidentally switched with another baby by a nurse. In Japan, there is also a concept called oya gacha—roughly, the luck of the parental draw, a term derived from the randomness of capsule-toy vending machines—so I think it’s exactly as you say: that from the moment of birth, we are already shaped to some degree by the conditions we are given.
Even so, when I said “not yet becoming anyone,” I meant a state in which identity formation has not yet occurred, and where there is not yet a boundary with the world—the “baby’s perspective” as I imagine it. That is, a self-awareness that gradually solidifies through the involvement of society and parents, but before that stage, the concepts of racism or nationalism have not yet been internalized.
MN: Before being socialized, in other words.
EAN: Yes. That said, adults already look at babies through a socialized gaze, so I think there is a gap there. We tend to think the children’s future is already pre-determined. Is it really true?
MN: Listening to you just now, it also seems that even that “not yet becoming anyone” state can shift quite early, depending on the system into which one is born. For example, you were able to enter into a same-sex marriage (*2) under the US system and have children through surrogacy (*3). Being born through surrogacy is itself almost impossible in Japan, and only becomes possible through the US system. Thinking about it that way, it feels like the state of being “not yet becoming anyone” and the state of already being within a system coexist at the same time.
*2 In the United States, same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide by a Supreme Court ruling in 2015. In Japan, same-sex marriage is not legally recognized, and lawsuits filed across the country since 2019 are still ongoing. Recent rulings have been divided: in 2025, the Nagoya and Osaka High Courts found the current system unconstitutional, while the Tokyo High Court upheld it as constitutional. Although more high court decisions have pointed to unconstitutionality, no unified conclusion has been reached, and the final judgment rests with the Supreme Court. This issue extends beyond marriage itself, affecting taxation, inheritance, parental rights, medical consent, and other aspects of family rights. In other words, the question of “who one can form a family with” is directly tied to “how one can live.”
*3 Surrogacy is a form of reproduction in which a third-party woman carries and gives birth to a child. Only a limited number of countries and regions permit commercial surrogacy, including certain U.S. states (such as California and Nevada), Ukraine, Georgia, and Russia (where regulations have recently tightened). In contrast, surrogacy is prohibited in countries such as France, Germany, and Italy, while in the U.K., Canada, and Australia, only altruistic (non-commercial) surrogacy is permitted under limited conditions. In Japan, there is no clear legal framework, and the Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology has generally taken a negative stance. As a result, many cases rely on arrangements overseas.
EAN: Yes. That duality certainly exists.
Surrogacy and Systems
MN: Did the personal process of surrogacy itself also influence the conception of the work?
EAN: At the time of my exhibition at The National Art Center, Tokyo (“Ei Arakawa-Nash: Paintings Are Popstars,” 2024), my twins had not yet been born. I can’t say definitively how surrogacy itself influenced the early conception of the Venice project, but even then I had a strong awareness that we were “not a heterosexual family.”
For this project, I’m planning to create a separate work that also functions as documentary footage, together with writer and filmmaker Yuko Nakamura and sociologist Eiko Saeki. The surrogate who carried our children might be able to visit Venice and see my work—what she thinks of it. We plan to document that, including interviews.
MN: That’s quite a deeply engaged attempt.
EAN: Yes. In the U.S., children born through surrogacy and egg donation are already in their third or fourth generation, but in Japan there is still a lot of debate. Precisely because of that, I want to speak in my own words. I’m developing this through collaboration with Nakamura and Saeki.
MN: This also connects to what you initially mentioned as “Trumpian nationalism,” but the United States is in a very contradictory situation, isn’t it? On one hand, reproductive technologies like surrogacy are quite institutionalized, while on the other hand, abortion rights are being shaken. In other words, technologies for enabling birth are advancing, while the right not to give birth appears to be receding. Within that situation, I’m curious how you understand the fact that you yourself had children through surrogacy.
EAN: Yes. What became possible for me within that system, and the problems inherent in it, cannot be separated.
MN: There are many countries where there is strong opposition to surrogacy. Globally, only a small number of countries permit commercial surrogacy. Even in countries where non-commercial surrogacy is permitted—including certain Christian-majority nations—there is considerable stigma. I feel that this reality may also surface in the viewing of this work.
EAN: In terms of elements within the work, there are parts that reference women’s reproductive rights (*4), and some people may view it from the perspective of declining birth rates or care labor. I think there are many possible points of entry. I personally think it is better for surrogacy to be institutionalized rather than becoming a black box or going underground. I’m interested in encouraging discussion while remaining attentive to the voices of those directly involved. That said, I also don’t think that when people first encounter the work in Venice, the issue of surrogacy will necessarily come to the fore.
*4 Reproductive rights, often referred to as sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), encompass not only the choice of whether or not to have children, but also bodily autonomy in matters of sexuality, access to pregnancy, childbirth, abortion, and fertility treatment, as well as access to appropriate healthcare and information. In the United States, access to reproductive technologies—including IVF and surrogacy—is relatively advanced, but the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturned Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed abortion rights, leaving decisions to individual states. Under the second Trump administration in 2025, state-level abortion bans have continued to expand, and debates over the legal status of IVF have also emerged. In Japan, while SRHR exists as a concept in policy discourse, its connection to legal systems remains limited. Abortion is legal, but there is no established legal framework for surrogacy or reproductive technologies for same-sex couples, and such practices often occur outside formal systems.
“Decentering,” Not “Dismantling”
MN: You’ve said that this work “decenters nationalism and patriarchy.” Why did you choose the word “decentering” rather than “dismantling”? Does it carry the nuance of displacing the center of gravity of a structure?
EAN: Yes. If the center of patriarchy is the father, then the intention is to displace that center. If you say “dismantling,” then the question arises of how to reconstruct it afterward. I felt that displacing the center is closer to actually changing the structure.
MN: What personally caught my attention here is that in Japan, patriarchy is directly tied to the family registry system, and also forms the basis for the same-surname requirement in marriage. But in my own case, I actually have a different surname from my daughter. When a parent’s signature differs from the child’s surname at school, it raises questions like “Who is this?” And when traveling abroad with my child when she was younger, we were repeatedly suspected of abduction at immigration. Each time that happens, it makes me think about what defines a family. I was drawn to your choice of “decentering”—which preserves the framework of the system while shifting its center—rather than calling for outright dismantling.
EAN: From the age of 12, my mother raised me as a solo parent. So I didn’t have a model of a father, and I never felt that I would become “a father” in a patriarchal sense. I also started using the pronoun “they” rather than “he.” That’s relatively recent. Because of that background, the word “dismantling” didn’t quite resonate with me. At the same time, when we got married, perhaps due to internalized patriarchy, my partner Forrest and I decided, “Let’s become a family of four with the family name Arakawa-Nash,” and we chose that surname. There was not only a kind of fantasy of “family,” but also a practical decision: if we were to go to a country where queer family formation is not recognized, sharing a surname and each of us having a genetic connection to the twins would provide legal cover for our children. At the same time, I do feel a deep frustration that selective separate surnames for married couples (*5) has not been legalized in Japan.
*5 In Japan, the law requires married couples to share a single surname (Civil Code Article 750). As a result, one spouse must change their name after marriage, and in the vast majority of cases, it is the woman. According to the Ministry of Justice, no other country has a similar system. Although the option of separate surnames for married couples has been debated for many years, it has not yet been realized. This issue is not merely about the choice of a name, but is connected to the ie system as a framework for managing the family as a single administrative unit.
MN: That’s also connected to the process of coming to terms with the family you grew up in, and the family you have built yourself. I understand that the concept of decentering also received an unexpected prompt when you visited Venice for a preliminary survey and discovered a mosaic signature on the floor of the Japan Pavilion reading “Yosizaka-Ohtake”[sic]—a dual credit acknowledging that Takamasa Yoshizaka provided the design philosophy while Juichi Otake served as the de facto lead who carried out the actual design and construction work.
EAN: Yes. It appears in about two places, and I found myself wondering why this approach had been taken—so I started researching. It turned out that in the same year Yoshizaka built the Japan Pavilion, a Japanese mountaineering expedition successfully summited Manaslu in Nepal. Yoshizaka participated in that expedition in a management-like role. A mountaineering team is a group of people with different areas of expertise and different roles, moving organically toward a single shared goal. From that experience, Yoshizaka developed the concept of “discontinuous unity” that same year. It’s decentric, in a sense—the idea that a space can be constituted by multiple centers, by disparate elements coming together as one. I had been thinking about something similar in my own work and performances, so I felt a kind of kinship with it.
Taking on the “I”
MN: Could you walk us through some of the more practical aspects of the exhibition? The 57 baby dolls, each weighing five to six kilograms—where were they sourced, and how were they modified?
EAN: They were commercially available products that I purchased in Florida and then modified. I had envisioned a child of around four months old for this work, but the commercially available dolls had bodies that were slightly too small, so I enlarged them. I added zippers so the weights can be inserted and removed, and installed an articulated internal armature in each one so they can be posed differently. There were five types of commercially available dolls: two modeled on white figures, and the remaining three modeled on Asian, Hispanic, and Black appearances respectively. Since the skin tones available were only four, I painted them to create approximately fourteen variations in total. This is also an homage to the work of Gyo Fujikawa (1908–1998), a Japanese American children’s book artist.
MN: And the primary participatory element is that visitors who wish to may carry one of the 57 dolls as they move through the Japan Pavilion?
EAN: Yes. In addition to the experience of carrying a baby doll through the space, visitors are invited to change a diaper on the second floor. Inside that diaper is a QR code, and when scanned, it leads to a poem.
For this project, I selected 57 dates to serve as the birthdays of the 57 babies—dates referencing events related to Japanese colonialism, as well as dates connected to reproductive rights and queer history. The selection process took considerable time. The poems accessible via the QR codes are each tied to the specific date on the corresponding diaper, and I commissioned them from astrologer and writer Yukari Ishii. The intention is that within the blessing of Ishii’s fairy-tale-like and allegorical language, the weight that lies behind each date rises to the surface.
Additionally, on the day of the press preview and on the second day of the public opening—which falls on Mother’s Day—a performance will take place with the Japan Pavilion as its stage, presented as FAC XTRA RETREAT (FXR), a seven-person collective of Asian American artists based in Los Angeles.
MN: Your work has consistently resisted being reduced to the artist as a singular individual—questioning, as it were, a decentered form of authorship. In this exhibition, beyond visitors carrying the dolls, what elements are you controlling? I also sense that relinquishing control itself may be part of what matters here.
EAN: I think that’s right. The absence of a fixed center means that movement becomes possible—things remain unfixed. When others contribute ideas to the work, things emerge that would never have come from within my own frame. The aim is to step outside my own framework. Seeking an unstable state of “not yet becoming anyone.” What I don’t know—the risks I can’t control, the situations in which something might fail—those are important too. I’m also collaborating with the Korean Pavilion, and there are many things that can’t be decided by a single individual; the sequencing is complex and demanding. The image I have is of navigating all of that in a performative way, maintaining balance as things proceed.
MN: Paradoxically, the result is that your own presence as an individual feels more foregrounded in this work than in anything you’ve done before. In past works, I had the sense that you actively chose to relinquish first-person authorship. Here, it seems as though you are instead claiming that position as a directly involved party. I was curious about that shift.
EAN: Honestly, that has been something I found difficult until now. I’ve emphasized having collaborators, but this time, because of the politically charged context of the Biennale, and because I am one of the parties directly involved in surrogacy and subsequent parenting, moments arose naturally within the work where I had to find my own words and speak. And of course, several of the contributors who provided work for the exhibition asked that of me as well.
Concretely, I will display in the exhibition space a list I created regarding the 57 dates corresponding to the babies’ birthdays, each entry beginning with “I feel—.” I used “I feel” because political dates can be interpreted differently depending on one’s position, so I needed to clarify why I selected those particular dates. There is a method used in couples therapy—rather than making declarative statements about the other person (“You are...”), foregrounding your own position first (“I feel...”) tends to reduce conflict. I felt that same logic applied to communicating with an audience: rather than asserting something about the other, first presenting one’s own standpoint.
MN: Taking on the first-person “I” within the work itself marks a significant departure from your previous practice.
EAN: Within the framework of the nation-state at the Biennale, the sense of taking on something like a social responsibility has grown even stronger than it was during my solo exhibition at the National Art Center. It felt less like a choice to speak with agency and more like a necessity—I had no other option. Whether that’s a product of the current moment or the particular character of the Venice Biennale, I’m not entirely sure.
Yoshizaka, who designed the Japan Pavilion, apparently spent part of his youth in Switzerland, and when he came to build the pavilion, he was asked to make something “more Japanese.” I imagine that forced him to grapple with the question of what Japan actually is—but the “Japaneseness” being invoked tends to be constrained by a 19th-century image of Japan. I myself—as a queer person, as an American citizen, as someone who chose surrogacy—fall outside the frame of that “Japaneseness.” And yet, precisely because I am presenting work within the structure of “the Japan Pavilion,” I came to feel that presenting this “otherness” in me—a self that does not conform—is one of my roles here.
Weight as Counterbalance
MN: I’d also like to ask about the specificity of the Giardini as a site. There are divergent views on the very concept of the national pavilion—do you feel any contradiction in presenting work in such a place?
EAN: My first participation in the Venice Biennale was in 2013, at the Georgia Pavilion. At the time it was a group exhibition in a provisional structure, positioned at the margins of the event (*6). This time the venue is the Japan Pavilion—a permanent structure within the Giardini—a site bound up with 19th-century imperial powers and the history of European colonialism. That’s precisely why I feel the weight of the responsibility, and having been given this opportunity, I also feel a necessity to address, as a factual record, the history of Japanese colonialism—a history I have no memory of having studied adequately as a child in Japan.
At the same time, many people are involved in this exhibition, which may seem to contradict what I said earlier about “I feel” statements—but I’m also using a methodology that doesn’t place all responsibility on me alone. There is a responsibility that comes with “doing something” at a national pavilion. At the same time, there’s something that feels right about approaching it in an “untidy” way—one that is true to being a performance artist. I’m glad I was able to do that.
*6 At the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), the Georgia Pavilion—in which Arakawa-Nash participated under a collective name with Gela Patashuri and Sergei Tcherepnin, officially leased a 60-square-meter rooftop space on top of an existing building in the Arsenale and constructed the pavilion as a temporary annex structure. The structure was named “Kamikaze Loggia,” after the informal add-on construction typical of Tbilisi since the 1990s, in which residents have built unauthorized extensions onto existing buildings to create additional living space following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The exhibition concept itself was centered on these “informal, peripheral, post-Soviet” architectural practices.
MN: The idea of distributing responsibility is also important when thinking about care. This work carries multiple layered contexts, and yet it also presents a somewhat uncanny sight—rows of cute baby dolls in sunglasses. Babies tend to be perceived as “cute” and “pure,” transcending differences—but could that also risk covering over difficult issues and producing an uncritical empathy?
EAN: I know what you mean —the concern that it might collapse into a kind of theme-park cuteness. In 1997, the German sculptor Isa Genzken created a work using baby dolls for the Münster Sculpture Project. Babies were placed along the roadside behind a church, and there was a coexistence of violence, humor, and eeriness. I think it’s a successful example of the baby motif. Similarly, the American performance artist Michael Smith has, since the 1970s, performed as “Baby Ikki,” wearing sunglasses and improvising as a baby. There’s a humor to an adult man becoming a baby, but the movements are surprisingly real, and cuteness coexists with disquiet.
In my exhibition as well, I want to create a space where the ambivalence surrounding babies—where love and unease coexist—can be openly discussed. The weight of the 57 dates and the physical weight of the baby dolls themselves should function as a counterbalance to that aspiration. In the space, there are also moments where the dolls are positioned above adult eye level, and I hope to create a sense of being watched by the babies. Exposed to that gaze, visitors might be moved to ask themselves: “Am I okay as an adult, or as I am?” “How am I going to raise a child?” Anxieties like that, or the impulse to redo some mistakes from the past, or a capacity for introspection—those are things I’m also thinking about.
Holding Space for Others
MN: The feelings surrounding babies are truly diverse—people who wanted children but could not have them, those who chose not to, those who have lost children. And in terms of care, many burdens are imposed simply by virtue of being “female,” regardless of individual choice. How do you, as an artist, think about those people as potential audiences?
EAN: Within queer family formation, there is of course joy in having children, and I would like to speak about that without concealing it. At the same time, I hope that through this work, people will feel moved to share something—not necessarily with me, but with someone—about their pain or discomfort about babies. (At the time of this interview, it was before the opening), so there are parts we won’t know until we actually do it. Art functions partly as fiction, operating within a framework somewhat different from real life. The fact that all the baby dolls are wearing sunglasses is a symbol of anonymous care, and at the same time a mark of fiction—something that exists slightly apart from reality.
When I first presented the dolls at the Mori Art Museum in March this year, in the program “Urgent Talk 052: Ei Arakawa-Nash,” there were more reactions than I expected along the lines of “they’re cute” and “I want to hold one.” At the same time, some people shared very personal stories about their own experiences related to children. In other words, the baby dolls function as a kind of trigger. As I’ve said, I hope that the trigger does not become violent, but instead becomes an opportunity to speak in a safe space. For that reason as well, I think it’s important for me to clearly articulate “I” messages, to make my own boundaries visible. I don’t think there is any need to conceal the joy of having children, but I want to avoid generalizing it as something that “should be this way,” and instead present it as my own experience as someone directly involved. I am thinking carefully if this work could possibly hurt someone’s feelings.
MN: It’s not that one must not speak about the beauty of “giving birth” or “raising children”—but how to do so without it becoming a form of superiority, or a kind of violence. That’s something I deeply relate to from my own experience.
EAN: In my case, it’s a minority model of queer parenting by two men. By presenting that difference, I hope it might contribute, even slightly, to unsettling some existing equilibrium somewhere.
After the Biennale, we are planning to reconstruct the same exhibition in Tokyo, which I’m also looking forward to. The context will be entirely different from Venice. I’d like to accumulate various experiences between now and then.
MN: The length of the Biennale—seven months—is also a special condition for a work that exists between performance and installation. Changes that you cannot control will inevitably emerge.
EAN: There are aspects in which the work is not made in a sustainable way, and I have to think about how to prevent disparities from emerging between when I am present and when I am not. In that sense, the participatory dimension works quite well.
MN: Finally, I heard that the clothes for the baby dolls were sewn by your mother. So it’s also a kind of parent-child collaboration.
EAN: That’s right. My mother, Arakawa Miwako, along with two of her friends Shimizu Sanae and Watanabe Yuko, a total of three people took it on as paid work. My mother helped with cutting the fabric, and the other two, who are very skilled at sewing, worked incredibly fast on the sewing machines. (Laughs.)
