Marking two decades of the Espaces Louis Vuitton and ten years of the Fondation Louis Vuitton’s Hors-les-murs program, a pair of exhibitions in Japan offers a compelling study in contrasts—one rooted in the fluid poetics of identity and migration, the other in the glossy, hyper-mediated language of contemporary culture. Presented simultaneously at Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo and Osaka, the shows bring together works from the Fondation’s collection, extending its international reach while underscoring the breadth of contemporary artistic expression.
Rina Banerjee’s Poetics of Diaspora and Transformation
Portrait of Rina Banerjee at Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo, 2026, photo by Jeremie Souteyrat, courtesy of Louis Vuitton.
Rina Banerjee, “Native, migrant naturally,” 2018, photo by Jeremie Souteyrat, courtesy of the artist and Perrotin.
In Tokyo, Rina Banerjee’s exhibition, “You made me leave my happy home to become someone else anew, in diasporas without origin to be related again this is living and in this waits the joy of one earthly place, hope of eternal intimacy. Intimate in Nature.”, unfolds as an immersive and deeply layered meditation on displacement, memory, and transformation. Spanning nearly three decades of the artist’s practice, the presentation gathers nineteen works—including sculpture, installation, and painting—that trace Banerjee’s ongoing engagement with the legacies of colonialism and the complexities of diasporic identity.
Banerjee’s visual language is at once sumptuous and subversive. Drawing from a wide array of materials—ostrich eggs, feathers, textiles, glass chandeliers, and domestic substances like cotton threads and coconut powders—her works conjure hybrid forms that oscillate between figuration and abstraction. These materials, many of which originate in the Global South, carry with them the histories of trade, labor, and cultural exchange that underpin colonial economies. In Banerjee’s hands, they are transformed into intricate sculptural assemblages and luminous painted figures that resist fixed interpretation.
At the center of the exhibition is the monumental installation In an unnatural storm a world fertile, fragile and desirous, polluted with excess pollination… (2008), a cascading dome of suspended elements that evokes both the wonder and precarity of global movement. Alongside it, more recent works—including the 2023 installation Black Noodles, which reflects on the international trade of human hair—extend her inquiry into contemporary systems of exchange and exploitation. Together, these works create a sensorial environment in which beauty and unease coexist, inviting viewers to reconsider the narratives embedded within objects and images.
Reimagining Identity Through Material and Form
Rina Banerjee, “Paintings,” 2020-2026, at Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo, 2026, photo by Jeremie Souteyrat, courtesy of Louis Vuitton.
Banerjee’s practice is further distinguished by its feminist perspective, particularly in her recurring depictions of female figures that recall Hindu goddesses while resisting their traditional iconography. These forms, rendered in vivid color and layered detail, suggest a reimagining of the “self” as fluid, transnational, and continuously evolving—an idea shaped by the artist’s own experience of migration across India, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
If Banerjee’s work operates in a space of poetic ambiguity, the exhibition in Osaka offers a markedly different register. “Jeff Koons: Paintings and Banality” surveys more than four decades of the artist’s career, tracing his evolution from early readymades to the dense, image-saturated paintings that define his later practice.
Jeff Koons and the Construction of Desire
Jeff Koons, “Wild Boy and Puppy,” 1988, photo by credits Jeremie Souteyrat, courtesy of the artist and the Fondation Louis Vuitton.
Koons has long occupied a singular position in contemporary art, one that collapses distinctions between high and low culture. His early works, such as Three Ball 50/50 Tank (1985), elevate everyday objects—basketballs, vacuum cleaners, consumer goods—into pristine display cases, imbuing them with a paradoxical sense of reverence. These pieces, emblematic of the American Dream, question the mechanisms through which value is assigned and desire is constructed.
The exhibition also revisits Koons’s iconic “Banality” series (1988), represented here by works like Woman in Tub and Wild Boy and Puppy. Combining cartoonish imagery with references to art history and personal memory, these sculptures blur the boundaries between kitsch and refinement, inviting both fascination and critique. In his later paintings, Koons expands this visual vocabulary into sprawling collages that layer disparate motifs—advertising imagery, pop culture references, and painterly gestures—into compositions that mirror the saturation of contemporary visual experience.
A Shared Inquiry Into Perception and Meaning
Jeff Koons, “Bracelet,” 1995-98, photo, photo by credits Jeremie Souteyrat, courtesy of the artist and the Fondation Louis Vuitton.
A defining feature of Koons’s work is its ability to implicate the viewer. Through reflective surfaces and meticulously rendered illusions, the audience becomes part of the artwork itself, confronted with their own image amid a landscape of cultural symbols. This interplay between perception and participation underscores Koons’s enduring interest in the relationship between art, identity, and collective consciousness.
While distinct in tone and approach, the exhibitions share a common thread in their exploration of how meaning is constructed—whether through the accumulation of materials and histories in Banerjee’s work, or through the manipulation of images and surfaces in Koons’s. Both artists, in different ways, challenge viewers to reconsider the familiar: Banerjee by transforming everyday materials into vessels of memory and critique, Koons by elevating the banal into objects of contemplation and desire.
The Fondation Louis Vuitton’s Global Dialogue
Portrait of Rina Banerjee at Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo, 2026, photo by Jeremie Souteyrat, courtesy of Louis Vuitton.
Together, these presentations exemplify the Fondation Louis Vuitton’s commitment to fostering global dialogue through art. By situating these exhibitions within its Hors-les-murs program, the institution not only expands access to its collection but also creates a dynamic platform for encountering diverse artistic voices across contexts. In Tokyo and Osaka, that vision materializes as a compelling juxtaposition—one that moves between intimacy and spectacle, history and immediacy, the handmade and the hyper-produced—offering a nuanced portrait of contemporary art’s many possibilities.
