is a Japanese artist, a member of Experiments in Art and Technology, and a promoter, supporter, and practitioner of Japanese video art. She is best known for her fog sculptures.

Early life and education

Nakaya was born in

Sapporo ( ain, サッ・ポロ・ペッ, Satporopet, lit=Dry, Great River) is a city in Japan. It is the largest city north of Tokyo and the largest city on Hokkaido, the northernmost main island of the country. It ranks as the fifth most populous city ...

in 1933, where her father Ukichirō Nakaya, who is credited with making the first artificial snowflakes, was at the time an assistant professor at

Hokkaido University , or , is a Japanese national university in Sapporo, Hokkaido. It was the fifth Imperial University in Japan, which were established to be the nation's finest institutions of higher education or research. Hokkaido University is considered ...

. Her father later produced a number of documentary films and radio programs and founded Iwanami Productions, a producer of documentary and educational films. Ukichirō Nakaya was also an accomplished sumi-e artist, and in 1960 his ink paintings were shown alongside Fujiko Nakaya's oil paintings in an exhibition at Sherman Gallery in Chicago. In recent years exhibitions at

Oslo Kunstforening ] Oslo Kunstforening is a contemporary art gallery and art society located in Oslo, Norway. History Oslo Kunstforening is located at ''Rådhusgata 19''. The gallery, situated in one of the oldest houses in the Kvadraturen area, is the oldest ar ...

an
Le Forum at Ginza Maison Hermès
have illustrated the influence of Ukichiro Nakaya's ideas and scientific practice on Fujiko Nakaya's artmaking. Fujiko Nakaya went to high school in Tokyo, graduating from Japan Women's University High School. After high school, she came to the United States to pursue a degree at

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

in Evanston, Illinois, USA. She graduated from Northwestern with a Bachelor of Arts in 1957 and went on to study painting in Paris and Madrid up until 1959.

Career

After spending some time in Europe where she briefly studied with Leonard Foujita (aka Fūjita Tsuguharu), Nakaya returned to Japan in 1960. She exhibited her oil paintings in the two-person show with her father at the Sherman Art Gallery in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

(1960) followed by her first solo exhibition, featuring twelve paintings, a
Tokyo Gallery
(1962).

Experiments in Art and Technology

Nakaya first gained prominence through her participation in the American art collective Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), founded in 1967. Nakaya had first performed with E.A.T. as a remote-control operator for

Deborah Hay Deborah Hay (born 1941 in Brooklyn, New York) is a choreographer, dancer, dance theorist, and author working in the field of experimental postmodern dance. She is one of the original founders of the Judson Dance Theater. Hay's signature slow and ...

's performance work ''Solo'' for '' 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering'' in 1966, but did not officially join the group until she became the Tokyo representative for E.A.T. in 1969. She was invited by Billy Klüver, at the suggestion of

Robert Rauschenberg Milton Ernest "Robert" Rauschenberg (October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008) was an American painter and graphic artist whose early works anticipated the Pop art movement. Rauschenberg is well known for his Combines (1954–1964), a group of artwor ...

(for whom she had translated during his 1964 performance at th
Sōgetsu Art Center
to create a fog sculpture for the Pepsi Pavilion at

Expo '70 The or Expo 70 was a world's fair held in Suita, Osaka Prefecture, Japan between March 15 and September 13, 1970. Its theme was "Progress and Harmony for Mankind." In Japanese, Expo '70 is often referred to as . It was the first world's fai ...

in Osaka. While the invitation did not require a specific kind of fog, Nakaya was concerned a chemical fog would limit who could participate in the work, so she took the opportunity to design the world's first water-based atmospheric fog sculpture with the help of engineer Thomas Mee. Nakaya considered nature to be a collaborator in this project, so she and Mee conducted a number of tests to see how the natural conditions of the site might shape the fog. They conducted tests of the output of various atomizing devices, wind tunnel tests of models of the pavilion, and studies of the wind patterns at the Pepsi Pavilion site in Osaka. The fog sculpture became recognized as one of the signature projects of the Pepsi Pavilion, and the fog system was patented by both Mee (hardware) and Nakaya (airflow) after Expo '70. Nakaya has since established many other fog installations at galleries worldwide, including the

Australian National Gallery The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in th ...

, Canberra and the

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is a museum of modern and contemporary art designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, and located in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain. The museum was inaugurated on 18 October 1997 by King Juan Carlos I of Sp ...

. After

, Nakaya continued working as a part of Experiments in Art and Technology by establishing the Tokyo branch of E.A.T. with Kobayashi Hakudō and Morioka Yūji. Their first project was the Tokyo node of the project ''Utopia Q&A, 1981'' that ran from July 30 to September 30, 1971 at the Fuji Xerox showroom in the Sony Building, Ginza. The Tokyo terminal was connected to terminals in

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

Stockholm Stockholm () is the capital and largest city of Sweden as well as the largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people live in the municipality, with 1.6 million in the urban area, and 2.4 million in the metropo ...

, and

Ahmedabad Ahmedabad ( ; Gujarati: Amdavad ) is the most populous city in the Indian state of Gujarat. It is the administrative headquarters of the Ahmedabad district and the seat of the Gujarat High Court. Ahmedabad's population of 5,570,585 (per ...

telex The telex network is a station-to-station switched network of teleprinters similar to a telephone network, using telegraph-grade connecting circuits for two-way text-based messages. Telex was a major method of sending written messages electroni ...

, and over the course of August, 1971, the four terminals traded messages predicting what the world might be like ten years into the future, in 1981. This telex network was organized on the occasion of the exhibition ''Utopias & Visions 1871-1981'' at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, curated by Pontus Hultén for the hundredth anniversary of the

Paris Commune The Paris Commune (french: Commune de Paris, ) was a revolutionary government that seized power in Paris, the capital of France, from 18 March to 28 May 1871. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, the French National Guard had defende ...

. However, the Tokyo terminal of this project had the most developed administrative structure of all the nodes, both because it required a translation team to translate incoming messages into Japanese and outgoing ones into English, and because E.A.T. Tokyo had organized the participation of a number of well known media and cultural figures including manga artist and animator

Tezuka Osamu Osamu Tezuka (, born , ''Tezuka Osamu''; – 9 February 1989) was a Japanese manga artist, cartoonist, and animator. Born in Osaka Prefecture, his prolific output, pioneering techniques, and innovative redefinitions of genres earned him such ...

, scientis
Oda Minoru
and composer Ichiyanagi Toshi.

Video Hiroba, Video Art, and Video Gallery SCAN

Since the 1970s, Nakaya has been a key figure of the video art scene in Japan, often serving as a conduit between North American and Japanese art practitioners. She first embarked on video at the invitation of Canadian video artist Michael Goldberg, and she worked with Katsuhiro Yamaguchi to organize the first exhibition of video art in Japan, ''Video Communication: Do-It-Yourself-Kit'' at the Sony Building, Ginza, in 1972. She was a central member of the video collective Video Hiroba that formed on the occasion of this show, and worked on both community collaborative projects and individual video sculptures from the 1970s through the 1990s. Her works have often been cited as examples of Video Hiroba's oeuvre, including her 1972 piece ''Friends of Minamata Victims—Video Diary'' and her 1973 interactive installation ''Old People's Wisdom'' — ''Cultural'' ''DNA.'' Yet beyond making video works, she also translated texts on video and promoted Japanese artists abroad. In 1974 she published a Japanese translation of

Michael Shamberg Michael Shamberg (born 1945?) is an American film producer and former Time–Life correspondent. Life and career His credits include '' Erin Brockovich'', ''A Fish Called Wanda'', '' Garden State'', ''Gattaca'', ''Pulp Fiction'' and '' The Bi ...

's '' Guerilla Television'', through Bijutsu Shuppansha, and translated other texts for the magazine ''Bijutsu Techō''. Nakaya also represented Video Hiroba for the Matrix Festival, Vancouver, in 1973 and assisted Barbara London with organizing the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of t ...

's 1979 exhibition of Japanese video art,
Video from Tokyo to Fukui and Kyoto
'. In 1980 Nakaya opened Japan's first video art gallery in

Harajuku is a district in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. Harajuku is the common name given to a geographic area spreading from Harajuku Station to Omotesando, corresponding on official maps of Shibuya ward as Jingūmae 1 chōme to 4 chōme. In popular refere ...

. The gallery was named Video Gallery SCAN by her friend and collaborator, video artist

Bill Viola Bill Viola ( , ; born 1951) is an American contemporary video artist whose artistic expression depends upon electronic, sound, and image technology in new media. His works focus on the ideas behind fundamental human experiences such as birth, d ...

. The gallery sponsored semiannual competitions for new works by artists, thus becoming a platform for promising new video artists to display their work. It also presented solo exhibitions through a series called SCAN FOCUS. Notable FOCUS exhibitions featured

, DCTV,

Nam June Paik Nam June Paik (; July 20, 1932 – January 29, 2006) was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super h ...

, Norio Imai, and Mako Idemitsu. Video Gallery SCAN also organized the Japan International Video Television Festival at

Spiral In mathematics, a spiral is a curve which emanates from a point, moving farther away as it revolves around the point. Helices Two major definitions of "spiral" in the American Heritage Dictionary are:General Idea General Idea was a collective of three Canadian artists, Felix Partz, Jorge Zontal and AA Bronson, who were active from 1967 to 1994. As pioneers of early conceptual and media-based art, their collaboration became a model for artist-initiated a ...

Shigeko Kubota (2 August 1937 – 23 July 2015) was a Japanese video artist, sculptor and avant-garde performance artist, who mostly lived in New York City. She was one of the first artists to adopt the portable video camera Sony Portapak in 1970, likening it ...

, Dara Birnbaum,

Peter Callas Peter Callas is an Australian artist, curator and writer, particularly known for his pioneering video art using computer graphics made with the Fairlight CVI (Computer Video Instrument).Meigh-Andrews, Chris, ''A History of Video Art'', second ...

Gary Hill Gary Hill (born April 4, 1951) is an American artist who lives and works in Seattle, Washington. Often viewed as one of the foundational artists in video art, based on the single-channel work and video- and sound-based installations of the 1970s ...

Dumb Type Dumb Type is an artist collective based in Kyoto, Japan founded in 1984. Dumb Type is a group of creative art forms that express the new and daily life of the twentieth century modern and technological world of Japan. During the 1980s Dumb Type ...

, and Marina Abromavic, among others. It also experimented with live satellite broadcasting, presented video sculptures, and introduced new works from artists in the Philippines, Thailand, and China.

Fog Sculptures

Nakaya's fog works have dominated her practice since the closing of Video Gallery SCAN in 1992. In an interview on April 27, 2014 with Irene Shum Allen, Nakaya explained that she doesn't directly create images with her fog sculptures, instead the fog is a kind of transducer that reacts to the local meteorological conditions. She commented that the landscape can appear to be largely static until fog is introduced. With the introduction of fog, nature's stories and information are made more accessible to the observer. Artist and art critic Kenjirō Okazaki has written extensively on Nakaya's work, and ties her fog works to the work of her father, scientist Ukichirō Nakaya. Okazaki likens Fujiko Nakaya's interest in video and fog to her father's use of photography and film to record snow and atmospheric conditions, and relates Ukichirō Nakaya's ethics of documenting nature in its imperfection—even photographing the "ugly" snow crystals left out of

Wilson Bentley Wilson Alwyn Bentley (February 9, 1865 – December 23, 1931), also known as Snowflake Bentley, was an American meteorologist and photographer, who was the first known person to take detailed photographs of snowflakes and record their feat ...

's collections—to Fujiko Nakaya's interest in contingent processes rather than completed objects in both her video and fog practices. Okazaki links the indeterminacy of Nakaya's fog and video works through the idea of medium:

The notion of “freedom” is conditioned by such behavior of medium. Therefore, the devotion to medium found in Fujiko Nakaya’s works fundamentally contradicts with artworks posited as forms of expression (these are bound to be regulated as deterministic tautology, stuck in the repetition of the same). What her works instead reveal is the force that transcends and overflows all forms of regulation: the behavior of medium, which is the absolute condition for “freedom” in this world (along with our “free will”).

When working in fog, Nakaya often collaborates with other creators, including video artist

, light artist Shiro Takatani, dancers

Trisha Brown Trisha Brown (November 25, 1936 – March 18, 2017) was an American choreographer and dancer, and one of the founders of the Judson Dance Theater and the postmodern dance movement. Brown’s dance/movement method, with which she and her dancers ...

and

Min Tanaka is a Japanese dancer and actor. Biography Tanaka was trained in ballet and modern dance, but in 1974, turned his back on these forms. He began his solo career with a series of nearly-naked primarily outdoor improvisational dances that took plac ...

, and musician

Ryūichi Sakamoto is a Japanese composer, pianist, singer, record producer and actor who has pursued a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). With his bandmates Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, Sakamoto inf ...

. In 1992 Nakaya collaborated with Atsushi Kitagawara Architects to create a playground in which dense fog envelops visitors twice each hour at Showa Kinen Park in Tokyo. Visitors experience the sense of being lost as the fog develops and being found again as the fog dissipates. The work is intended to evoke a reverence for nature and a reminder of the cycle of life and death. In 2002 Nakaya acted as a consultant to architects Diller + Scofidio o
Blur Building
created for the Swiss Expo 2002 on

Lake Neuchâtel Lake Neuchâtel (french: Lac de Neuchâtel ; frp, Lèc de Nôchâtél; german: Neuenburgersee) is a lake primarily in Romandy, in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. The lake lies mainly in the canton of Neuchâtel, but is also shared by t ...

in Yverdon-les-Bains. According to the pair, Nakaya thought their original idea unachievable, but "it was her idea about irregular nozzle concentrations that saved the day." Nakaya has received numerous awards including the Australian Cultural Award, the Laser d’Or at the Locarno International Video Festival, the Yoshida Isoya Special Award, the Minister for Posts and Telecommunications Award for artistic contribution to HDTV programming and the Special Achievement Prize at the 2008 Japan Media Arts Festival Nakaya was awarded th
Praemium Imperiale
award in sculpture from the Japan Art Association in 2018. The first large-scale retrospective of Nakaya's work was held at

Art Tower Mito is an arts complex in Mito, Ibaraki, Japan. It opened in 1990 as part of the centennial celebrations of the municipality of Mito. There is a concert hall that seats 680, a theater for up to 636, a contemporary art gallery, and a landmark towe ...

in Japan from October, 2018 through January 2019. The first retrospective outside Japan followed from April 2022 through July 2022 in Munich, Germany.

Works

*1970 : Fog Sculpture "PEPSI PAVILION,"

, Osaka *1972 : ''Friends of Minamata Victims''—''Video Diary'' *1973 : ''Old People's Wisdom—Cultural DNA'', installation at ''Computer Art '73'', Sony Building, Ginza, Tokyo *1974 : ''Standing an Egg'', interactive video installation at the ''Eleventh Japan International Contemporary Art Exhibition'',

Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum The is an art museum in Tokyo, Japan. It is one of Japan's many museums which are supported by a prefectural government. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"Museums"in ''Japan Encyclopedia'', pp. 671-673. The current structure, designed by Kunio ...

, Tokyo * 1974 : Fog Environment for David Tudor Concert "ISLAND EYE ISLAND EAR" (Collaboration with David Tudor, Jacqueline Monnier), Knavelskar Island, Sweden (Produced by E.A.T.) * 1976 : ''Fog Sculpture #94768: Earth Talk'', The 2nd

Biennale of Sydney The Biennale of Sydney is an international festival of contemporary art, held every two years in Sydney, Australia. It is a large and well-attended contemporary visual arts event in the country. Alongside the Venice and São Paulo biennales and ...

, (renamed ''Foggy Wake in a Desert'' in 1983 for National Gallery of Australia, Canberra) * 1980 : ''Opal Loop/Cloud Installation #72503'', for Trisha Brown Dance Company, New York (recreated in 1981, 1996, and 2010) * 1980 : ''Cloud Lake,'' The 11th International Sculpture Conference * 1980 : ''Fog Sculpture: Kawaji'', Festival of Light, Sound and Fog, Tochigi (collaboration with

) * 1981: ''Waterfall: An Integrated River'', video installation at The Miyagi Museum of Art, Miyagi * 1983 : ''Fog Sculpture #94925: Foggy Wake in a Desert: An Ecosphere'',

National Gallery of Australia The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in th ...

Canberra Canberra ( ) is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The ci ...

(permanent installation) * 1983 : ''Meltee-vee,'' video installation at Museum of Modern Art, Toyoma * 1988 : ''Fog Sculpture: Skyline'', Jardin de l'eau,

Parc de la Villette The Parc de la Villette is the third-largest park in Paris, in area, located at the northeastern edge of the city in the 19th arrondissement. The park houses one of the largest concentrations of cultural venues in Paris, including the Cité d ...

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

* 1990-1 : ''Four Wells,'' video installation,

National Art Center, Tokyo (NACT) is a museum in Roppongi, Minato, Tokyo, Japan. A joint project of the Agency for Cultural Affairs and the National Museums Independent Administrative Institution, it stands on a site formerly occupied by a research facility of the Universi ...

* 1992 : ''Foggy Forest'', Children's Park,

Showa Memorial Park is a national government park in Akishima and Tachikawa, Tokyo, Japan. It is the largest park in the Tokyo area, covering 1,653,000 square meters. Formerly a Japanese military airbase and in the postwar era operated by the US military, Tac ...

Tachikawa 250px, Showa Memorial Park is a city located in the western portion of Tokyo Metropolis, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 184,383 in 93,428 households, and a population density of 7600 persons per km2. The total area of the ci ...

(Tokyo) * 1994 : "Greenland Glacial Moraine Garden", Ukichiro Nakaya Museum of Snow and Ice, Kaga City, Japan (Architect : Arata Isozaki), Kaga * 1998 : ''Fog Sculpture #08025: F.O.G.'',

, Spain (Permanent Collection) * 2001 : ''IRIS'', Fog Sculpture in collaboration with Shiro Takatani in Valencia Harbour, The 1st

Valencia Valencia ( va, València) is the capital of the autonomous community of Valencia and the third-most populated municipality in Spain, with 791,413 inhabitants. It is also the capital of the province of the same name. The wider urban area al ...

Biennial,

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = '' Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , ...

* 2004 : ''Fog Sculpture #28634: "Dialogue", Technology for Living: Experiments in Art and Technology,'
Norrköpings konstmuseum

Norrköping Norrköping (; ) is a city in the province of Östergötland in eastern Sweden and the seat of Norrköping Municipality, Östergötland County, about 160 km southwest of the national capital Stockholm, 40 km east of county seat Linkö ...

* 2005 : ''Fog Chamber-Riga #26422'', for Conversations with Snow and Ice, The Natural History Museum of Latvia,

Riga Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the ...

* 2010 : ''Cloud Forest'', fog installation, light and sound in collaboration with Shiro Takatani, commissioned by the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media

CAM Calmodulin (CaM) (an abbreviation for calcium-modulated protein) is a multifunctional intermediate calcium-binding messenger protein expressed in all eukaryotic cells. It is an intracellular target of the secondary messenger Ca2+, and the bin ...

* 2011 : fog installation in collaboration with Shiro Takatani, Ishibutai Tumulus, Asuka Historical Park,

Nara The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is an " independent federal agency of the United States government within the executive branch", charged with the preservation and documentation of government and historical records. It ...

* 2011 : ''Fog Garden #07172 - Moss Garden Nicey-sur-Aire'', Vent des forêts, Arrondissement de Commercy * 2013 : ''Fog Bridge #72494'',

Exploratorium The Exploratorium is a museum of science, technology, and arts in San Francisco, California. Characterized as "a mad scientist's penny arcade, a scientific funhouse, and an experimental laboratory all rolled into one", the participatory natu ...

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

* 2014: ''Veil,'
The Glass House

New Canaan New Canaan () is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 20,622 according to the 2020 census. About an hour from Manhattan by train, the town is considered part of Connecticut's Gold Coast. The town is bounde ...

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York (state), New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the ...

* 2015 : "Fog Bridge", fog installation and exhibition at the Arnolfini Centre of Contemporary Arts, commissioned fo
IBT15 Bristol International Festival

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

*2017 : ''Pathfinder #18700 Oslo'', Ekebergparken,

Oslo Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of ...

*2018 : "Fog x FLO" includes five site-responsive installations along

Fredrick Law Olmsted Frederick Law Olmsted (April 26, 1822August 28, 1903) was an American landscape architect, journalist, social critic, and public administrator. He is considered to be the father of landscape architecture in the USA. Olmsted was famous for co-de ...

's Emerald Necklace in celebration of the 20th anniversary of th
Emerald Necklace Conservancy
*2022 : "''Munich Fog (Wave), #10865/I''" and "''Munich Fog (Fogfall) #10865/II''" at

Haus der Kunst The ''Haus der Kunst'' (, ''House of Art'') is a non-collecting modern and contemporary art museum in Munich, Germany. It is located at Prinzregentenstraße 1 at the southern edge of the Englischer Garten, Munich's largest park. History N ...

in Munich, Germany.

Awards

* 1976 : Australian Cultural Award -Fog Sculpture #94768 "Earth Talk" * 1983 : Finalist, The First International Water Sculpture Competition -Fog Performance "Louisiana Dump" * 1990 : Laser d'Or, Locarno Video Festival -Contribution of SCAN * 1992 : Minister of Construction Award -"Foggy Forest" * 1993 : Yoshida Isoya Special Award -"Foggy Forest" * 2001 : Minister of Communication Award -Artistic contribution to HDTV Programming * 2006 : Descartes Science Communication Prize, nominee, EU Commission -Curation of a science and art exhibition "Conversations with snow and ice" in Latvia * 2008 : Media Arts Festival, Special Achievement Prize -Contribution to Media Arts * 2017 : Commandeur, Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France * 2018 : Praemium Imperial Award in Sculpture
Japan Art Association
* 2023 : Wolf Prize in Arts

Other notable achievements

* 1979-1998 : lecturer at

Nihon University , abbreviated as , is a private research university in Japan. Its predecessor, Nihon Law School (currently the Department of Law), was founded by Yamada Akiyoshi, the Minister of Justice, in 1889. It is one of Japan's leading private universit ...

for the Department of Cinema, College of Arts * 1989: "System/apparatus for making a cloud sculpture from water-fog" Patent #1502386 * 2017: Author Dan Brown, in the novel

Origin (Brown novel) ''Origin'' is a 2017 mystery thriller novel by American author Dan Brown and the fifth installment in his ''Robert Langdon'' series, following '' Inferno''. The book was released on October 3, 2017, by Doubleday. The book is predominantly set ...

, refers to the work of Nakaya as his character Robert Langdon visits the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain in search of former student Edmond Kirsch. Noting that the fog sculpture constantly changes shape, Brown uses the setting to create an ethereal and dramatic scene as Langdon enters the Guggenheim museum.

References

External links

Lives and works, Fujiko Nakaya

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

file) *
The lucid, unclouded fog―the movement of bright and swinging water particles.
'(by

Kenjiro Okazaki is a Japanese visual artist and robotics designer whose works span several genres, including painting, sculpture (reliefs and constructions), as well as landscape design and architecture. Career Many of Okazaki's visual works have been feature ...

) {{DEFAULTSORT:Nakaya, Fujiko 1933 births Living people People from Sapporo Japanese contemporary artists Japanese sculptors 20th-century sculptors 21st-century sculptors Northwestern University alumni Experiments in Art and Technology collaborating artists Commandeurs of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres