116th metaPhorest Seminar
December 28th, 2025 (Friday) 19:00-20:40
116th metaPhorest Seminar: Kumi Hiroi & Yuta Ikeya
This event will be primarily in Japanese, but questions and comments in English are also welcome.
The metaPhorest seminar on Friday, December 5th is a joint seminar featuring guest artist Hiroi Kumi, who works between the Netherlands and Japan, and Yuta Iketani, a new metaPhorest member who returned from the Netherlands in 2025. Within their shared creative theme of the relationship between humans and nature, they will each speak from distinct perspectives: geography, history, and economics (Hiroi Kumi) versus technology (Yuta Ikeya). You may also catch glimpses of how their experiences with differing perspectives on nature in the Netherlands and Japan influence their creative work.
Date, Place
December 28th, 2025 (Friday) 19:00-20:40 Waseda TWIns 3F Seminar room 3 https://maps.app.goo.gl/Wy23SqPPMo3P7V8JA
ONLINE
This seminar can also be held online. Zoom Link
Kumi Hiroi
An artist based in Amsterdam and Tokyo. Her work explores biases, preconceptions, and discriminatory elements inherent in the relationship between language and imagery. In recent years, she has explored the geographical, historical, and economic contexts of symbolic images surrounding humans and nature through literature research, interviews, and fieldwork, treating the process itself as the language of her work. Using diverse media such as text, photography, video, textiles, and glass, she critically depicts structures while navigating between reality and imagination.
Yuta Ikeya
Designer and engineer. Seeks not technology aimed at quantification and efficiency, but rather a form of technology capable of building new relationships between humans and other living beings and nature. After studying mechanical engineering and gaining professional experience as an engineer, he pursued design research at Eindhoven University of Technology (Netherlands) starting in 2021. Since then, he has created and researched works and tools that interweave living organisms and technology. He joined metaPhorest in 2025.