Moment

【Love Stone Project】
“Love Stone Project” is a participatory art project by sculptor Atsuya Tominaga. He brings heart-shaped stones he has carved to locations across Japan and around the world, where he polishes them together with the people he meets, bringing them to a shine through the collective care of everyone involved.
The project originated in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. Tominaga visited affected communities in the Tohoku region “to listen to the voices of the stones that had witnessed everything.” There, while splitting a stone, he discovered a naturally formed heart shape. Through this experience, he came to believe that if people could recognize, through stone, that they too are part of nature, the world could be brought together. Since then, he has continued polishing heart-shaped stones together with people.
In 2013, Our Love—a work comprising three heart-shaped travertine stones from Italy, Iran, and the former Yugoslavia, which more than 500 local residents helped polish—won the Grand Prize at the 25th UBE Biennale. This recognition allowed the project to gain momentum and expand across Japan and internationally.
Rather than simply observing the artist at work, participants touch and polish the stones themselves, becoming part of the creative process. The stones are polished with seven progressively finer grades of sandpaper until their surfaces become glossy enough to reflect the sky. People with different languages and perspectives gather around the same stone and share time through the act of polishing; this process itself forms part of the artwork.
To date, the project has taken place at approximately 300 locations, including Fuchu Art Museum, the National Museum of Ethnology, Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum, Nagano Prefectural Art Museum, The Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, and Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai, Japan. It has also been held at locations across Japan and in countries including the United States, Italy, Spain, Mexico, Nepal, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bhutan, and Ethiopia. More than 30,000 people have participated.
Through stones polished by many hands, the project gives expression to the connections between people and nature, the bonds among people, and a shared hope for love and peace that transcends differences in language and culture.

I first started creating sculptures using pennies on the ground in the Wall Street area
of New York City in 1988. The sculptures were comprised of 10,000 pennies arranged
in a 100 x 100 square. The following year, I made two similar sculptures next to each
other-one with US pennies, the other with Japanese yen-collectively titled “Exchange
Rate Art”.

The process typically takes about 6 hours. The painstaking repetitive work, reminiscent of an ordinary person’s daily routine, in fact goes beyond. Lucio Pozzi, formerly of the School of the Visual Art (SVA), once observed: “It is an honorable thing Mikiya is doing. Like the ancient Zen masters, he is showing that repetition and continuity produce art above and beyond the ordinary [ …. ] such static repetitiveness can be mystical”.

In this new round of performances, I will create sculptures using American pennies. While doing so, I will wear kuroko, a traditional outfit worn by Japanese stagehands to make them invisible.

After the sculpture is complete, I will dismantle it, transforming Money (Coins) into Art (Icons), then allowing the Art (Icons) to revert to Money (Coins).

While I am working, I will try not to talk, instead allowing the money to “talk”.

I will paint a large-scale piece from my series featuring fused figures of animals and children, all in a single day. Please come and experience the texture of the oil paint, along with the animal fur and children’s eyes coming to life right before you.

Three-Dimensional Tea Party
In June 2026, the first TDTP took place right here in Fukuoka.
“Multiverse,” “Interdimensional Counseling Room,” and “Floating Matcha” —after experiencing these three distinct tea encounters, to what kind of dimension will you arrive?

Tea: Ryohei Asakawa, Kengo Harada, Yutaro Midorikawa