Image: Tokyo Photographic Art Museum
Tokyo Photographic Art Museum is presenting 'Mako Idemitsu: Onna no sakuhin — A Filmmaker’s Autobiography', a solo exhibition that traces the full scope of the Japanese video art pioneer’s work. The exhibition is running at the museum’s second-floor gallery in Tokyo and is accompanied by a series of public programs, including film screenings, a guest talk and curator-led gallery talks.
The exhibition centers on work by Idemitsu, who was born in Tokyo in 1940 and developed a practice shaped by the tensions between social roles and artistic selfhood. According to the museum’s information, her practice has consistently examined the friction between being a daughter, wife and mother and being an artist, while using a feminist perspective to question the family, parent-child relationships and the social pressures facing women who make art. Her work is presented here as an autobiographical body of moving-image art rather than as a single-issue retrospective.
The museum’s program information notes that the show runs from June 18 to September 21, 2026, in Exhibition Room 2 on the museum’s second floor at Yebisu Garden Place. Admission is set at 700 yen for general visitors, with reduced rates for students, high school students, visitors aged 65 and over, and free entry for middle school students and younger, as well as people with disabilities and up to two accompanying caregivers. The museum is open from 10:00 to 18:00, and until 20:00 on Thursdays and Fridays.
The exhibition highlights work from the 1970s and 1980s, and the accompanying article in Bijutsu Techo describes those works as part of a critically engaged practice that carries clear anger and discomfort toward existing social structures. In the published discussion, the artist and performer Yukkyun, who toured the exhibition for the magazine’s series, said that Idemitsu’s films and video works felt more personal in some cases, while also addressing social systems and stereotypes with directness. The piece is framed around Yukkyun’s responses after a lecture by a curator and a close viewing of the galleries.
One of the works mentioned in the article is 'Make Up' (1978), alongside 'Onna no sakuhin'. The text also refers to Idemitsu’s on-screen presence in some works and to the way her body appears in relation to roles and performance. The magazine’s profile section lists Idemitsu as an artist who studied in Tokyo, later went to New York, and wrote books including 'What a Woman Made' and 'White Elephant'.
Alongside the exhibition, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum is programming a screening series devoted to 40 works by Idemitsu, presented in nine programs on August 27 to 30 and September 17 to 20 in the museum’s first-floor hall. The museum also lists a guest talk on September 19 at 16:00 with Asako Yuzuki and Haruna Ito, plus curator gallery talks with sign-language interpretation on August 21 and September 18 at 14:00.
