Institute of Contemporary Art Miami ICA Miami

ICA Miami is pleased to present the first major US museum exhibition for Japanese ceramicist Masaomi Yasunaga. Emotive, highly textured and otherworldly, Yasunaga’s works open up new possibilities for his chosen medium, interpreting modern avant-garde ceramics with a radically contemporary approach. This exhibition comprises recent works and a site-specific installation, highlighting the dynamic interdisciplinarity of Yasunaga’s innovative approach to material transformation.

Yasunaga was trained by Satoru Hoshino, a third generation proponent of the Sodeisha movement, which sought to innovate new techniques and sculptural forms eschewing the functionality and aesthetics of traditional folk art. Yasunaga creates ceramics using a traditional Tebineri method, coil-building by hand; in lieu of clay, he uses only glazes, and unconventional mixtures of glaze and minerals, rocks, metals, and glass powders. To preserve the forms during firing, Yasunaga buries them in sand or unrefined porcelain within large kilns. Once fired, the resulting forms are removed from layers of material, a process the artist likens to archaeological excavation.

Masaomi Yasunaga (b. 1982, Osaka) lives and works in Iga-shi, Mie Prefecture, Japan. He has a Masters Degree in Environmental Design from Osaka Sangyo University. Recent exhibitions include “即兴游离：陶瓷新倾向” (Impromptu Drift: New Tendencies in Ceramics), UCCA Clay, Yixing, Jiangsu Province, China (2025), “In Holding Close” at Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Arts, Auburn (2023), and “Masaomi Yasunaga: A Shadow of the Eternity” at Utsuwakan, Kyoto, Japan (2019). His work is featured in the permanent collections of the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn, Alabama; Musée Ariana, Geneva; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

“Masaomi Yasunaga: 記憶の足跡 | Traces of Memory” is organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, and curated by Alex Gartenfeld, Irma and Norman Braman Artistic Director, and Amanda Morgan, Associate Curator.