"VOCA Exhibition 2026: Perspectives on Contemporary Art—New Artists of the Flat Surface" Opens at Ueno Royal Museum
The VOCA Exhibition 2026, supporting promising young flat surface artists, has opened at the Ueno Royal Museum, with Sayaka Toda winning the VOCA Prize.Summary
The "VOCA Exhibition 2026: Perspectives on Contemporary Art—New Artists of the Flat Surface" has opened at the Ueno Royal Museum in Tokyo and runs until March 29th. The VOCA Exhibition has been held annually since 1994 to support promising young artists under 40 working in the field of flat surface contemporary art, featuring works recommended by curators and researchers nationwide.
Sayaka Toda won the VOCA Prize for her work, *Echoes of the Unspoken*, which uses nude sculptures found in the studio of a deceased sculptor (the father of a professor at her alma mater, Joshibi University of Art and Design) as its motif. Toda combines photography and painting to explore the symbolism and layers of time, consciously reinterpreting the female nude, traditionally created under the "male gaze," from a "female gaze."
Other awards included the VOCA Encouragement Prize awarded to Sou Sou-en for *Pain things - Paintings* and Kento Terada for *The Gunshot Still Echoes*. The VOCA Honorable Mention Prizes went to Chiaki Kato for *Wavering Contours, Picking Up Fragments of Voices* and Aya Kurashiki for *Lending a Hand*. The accompanying text includes evaluations from the nominators regarding the artists' unique approaches, such as Kato's use of crochet to "knit photographs" and Kurashiki's focus on the hands of historical female figures like Mary Magdalene and Ono no Komachi.
(Source：美術手帖)