Eugene Kangawa and A-POC ABLE ISSEY MIYAKE’s Paris exhibition
Japanese artist Eugene Kangawa joins forces with A-POC ABLE ISSEY MIYAKE for TYPE-XIV Eugene Studio project, a collaboration debuting in Paris during Art Basel. The presentation, conceived by architect Tsuyoshi Tane and hosted at Lycée Turgot, marks a three-year exchange between Kangawa and A-POC ABLE’s designer Yoshiyuki Miyamae. Centered on a groundbreaking textile that translates the artist’s ongoing series ‘Light and shadow inside me’ (2022–), the exhibition situates the meeting point of art, design, and material research within a single woven surface. From the slow burn of sunlight on paper to the precision of woven threads, Kangawa and A-POC ABLE ISSEY MIYAKE’s collaboration transforms the immaterial into form.
‘Light and shadow inside me’ is a body of work made entirely through light. Earlier iterations comprised sheets of paper brushed with dye, folded into geometric shapes, and left to fade under sunlight for weeks, while later versions evolved into monochrome photograms made by exposing folded photographic paper to artificial light. ‘The idea that all things, by the very fact of their existence, simultaneously possess both light and shadow — countless fronts and backs — is central to who I am and my practice,’ Kangawa explains to designboom. ‘My goal was to create a work of art that embodies and enacts this coexistence.’ The series was born from what he describes as a moment of revelation. ‘It all began one winter day when I found a sun-faded box at home. In that moment, everything connected, and the idea grew into these works,’ he tells us.
images © ISSEY MIYAKE INC.
Transforming Photographic Concepts into Fabric Form
TYPE-XIV Eugene Studio traces back to Kangawa’s solo exhibition The New Sea at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, where Miyamae first encountered the artist’s ‘green paintings’, sheets of watercolor paper coated with dye, folded like origami, and left to fade under sunlight for a month. Kangawa later adapted this technique to photographic paper, producing monochrome photograms that captured the tension between exposure and concealment. ‘These works were created by applying a single-color dye onto one sheet of paper, folding it—without cutting—and exposing it to sunlight,’ he explains. ‘When unfolded, the light had become both the brush and the memory.’
It was this process that fascinated Miyamae and his team, leading to a series of workshops and experiments at A-POC ABLE ISSEY MIYAKE. ‘What was most surprising about this collaboration was that Miyamae and his team spoke of ‘weaving a new language’ — starting completely from scratch to create the textile in an entirely new way,’ Kangawa recalls. ‘Their garments are beautiful, yet what struck me most was that they think not in terms of surface, but from structure itself.’
Eugene Kangawa joins forces with A-POC ABLE ISSEY MIYAKE
Weaving Becomes an Act of Illumination
The result is a technically groundbreaking ‘bit-level’ textile, in which tonal gradients from black to white emerge solely from variations in weave density without any dyes or colored threads. The team drew analogies between the intersection of threads and the microscopic silver particles that make up photographic paper, transforming light’s material absence into the tactility of fabric. Miyamae describes the process as a return to fundamentals. ‘We returned to the smallest unit of fabric: a single thread. Using only black and white threads, we explored light and shadow through variations in weave patterns and density, translating the phenomena of photographic paper and light into the language of cloth,’ A-POC ABLE’s designer shares.
For Kangawa, the collaboration resonates deeply with Issey Miyake’s human-centered design philosophy. ‘Issey Miyake’s philosophy connects closely with my own work, particularly in exploring existence,’ he says. ‘Light and shadow inside me began as a meditation on loss, peace, and nature—the idea that light can be both beautiful and fearsome. In Japanese sensibility and history, light has always carried this duality. Some people even say the works evoke associations with the nuclear.’
the exhibition positions the textile within a broader study of Japanese material culture
The Global Journey of a Light-Born Work
The exhibition design by Tsuyoshi Tane, renowned for his projects such as the Estonian National Museum and the Al Thani Collection at Hôtel de la Marine, positions the textile within a broader study of Japanese material culture. Alongside the new fabric, visitors encounter test pieces, tools, and archival materials, including an Edo-period book on origata (traditional paper folding) whose patterns unexpectedly echo those found in Kangawa’s photograms. ‘When we were preparing for the exhibition, we were surprised to find within the book a folding pattern strikingly similar to those created in ”Light and shadow inside me,”’ Kangawa recalls and tells us.
Following its Paris debut, the project will travel to Tokyo and Osaka, extending the collaboration across contexts. Meanwhile, ‘Light and shadow inside me’ will find a permanent home at the forthcoming Eugene Museum in Tabanan, Bali, opening in 2026. Designed by Andra Matin, the museum will host over fifteen of Kangawa’s works in a complex surrounded by UNESCO-protected rice terraces. Visitors will be invited to stay overnight and experience the shifting qualities of light that underpin the artist’s practice.
alongside the new fabric, visitors encounter test pieces, tools, and archival materials
the project will travel to Tokyo and Osaka
for Kangawa, the collaboration resonates deeply with Issey Miyake’s human-centered design philosophy
‘Light and shadow inside me’ is a body of work made entirely through light
the show is centered on a groundbreaking textile that translates the artist’s ongoing series
Kangawa and A-POC ABLE ISSEY MIYAKE’s collaboration transforms the immaterial into form
a body of work made entirely through light
TYPE-XIV Eugene Studio traces back to Kangawa’s solo exhibition The New Sea
Miyamae first encountered the artist’s ‘green paintings’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
monochrome photograms capture the tension between exposure and concealment
project info:
name: Light and shadow inside me — Eugene Kangawa x A-POC ABLE ISSEY MIYAKE
artist: Eugene Kangawa / EUGENE STUDIO | @eugene_studio_official
designer: Yoshiyuki Miyamae, A-POC ABLE ISSEY MIYAKE | @apocableisseymiyake_official
spatial design: Tsuyoshi Tane / ATTA | @ateliertsuyoshi_tanearchitects
location: Lycée Turgot, 40 Rue Volta, 75003 Paris, France
dates: 24th – 26th October 2025
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