-1.jpg&w=3840&q=75){kind=logo}
Loading
Since 2020, KIKA contemporary art space (KIKA cas) has focused on its role in Kyoto as a multilingual hub for contemporary art, merging local and international creative practitioners. In 2024, we relocated to our current location with the objective of maintaining our core aim as a platform for dialogue and experimentation through additional public programming and a new bookstore. Over the years, we have welcomed artists and academics from over ten countries.
Please consider sustaining our work as an independent artist space run by a small team. We operate primarily on bookstore sales, occasional grants, and individual donations from our community. Donations will help cover basic operating expenses to support artists and their exhibitions, as well as public programming through lectures and panel events. Thank you for your support.
Please note that we are not a non-profit and do not offer tax-deductible donations.
While based in Kyoto, KIKA cas operates within a translocal and transnational network that includes broader Asia and Europe. KIKA aims to be a platform for practices that transcend physical boundaries through ongoing collaborations with artists and researchers in Japan and abroad.
We engage in various activities, such as art residencies, research, dialogue, and critical exchange. For KIKA cas, being “international” means more than exhibiting abroad; it also means thinking and collaborating with others.
KIKA cas participated in the 3rd Larnaca Biennale, an international art festival held in Larnaca, Cyprus in 2023, and organized a satellite group exhibition titled To the Sea, with Her Names.
While operating the gallery and bookstore, KIKA cas members also actively pursue their own art practices. Based on mutual support with an unofficial motto, "Those who are able, do what they can," KIKA operates as a flexible economic community in which individual skills and resources are shared. This emphasis on sharing and the commons serves as the foundation for understanding KIKA's activities as a collective.
KIKA cas aims to function as a private art center and a social platform that fosters community interaction against increasingly challenging circumstances faced by public art institutions. It envisions itself as an art project that reconsiders and reconstructs the concept of “publicness,” which is even more unstable due to economic and institutional constraints, by engaging with it from multiple angles.
A talk event that addressed the international art exhibition documenta fifteen (2022, Kassel, Germany) was held at the Goethe-Institut Villa Kamogawa in Sakyo-ku, Kyoto.
Thank you for your interest in KIKA's activities. Here we accept one-time donations.
Or enter a custom amount.
As a gesture of our gratitude, donors of ¥10,000 or more will be acknowledged on our website (nicknames welcome). Please check the box if you wish to remain anonymous. If you are supporting as a company or organization and wish to include your logo, please contact us.
KIKA cas offers a membership program to support our activities on an ongoing basis. There are three tiers ranging from 1,000 yen to 10,000 yen per month, each with its own benefits. If you are interested, please consider joining.
