Atsushi Kaga

Atsushi Kaga was born in Tokyo in 1978 and has built his practice across two countries, living and working between Ireland and Japan. He trained at Coláiste Stiofáin Naofa in Cork, where he completed a diploma in 2001, before graduating with a BA in Fine Art from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin in 2005. That dual formation — rooted in Japanese origin yet shaped by Irish art education — runs as a quiet constant through a body of work that has drawn sustained institutional and critical attention on several continents.

Kaga's international profile has been shaped by an unusually consistent record of support from the Arts Council of Ireland, which awarded him Visual Arts Bursaries in 2007, 2009, 2010, 2013, 2016, and 2020, alongside a Travel Bursary in 2011. That same year he received the Montblanc Young Artist World Patronage Award, with the distinction documented by the Ueshima Museum Collection in Tokyo. Residencies have taken him from the Fountainhead Residency in Miami in 2009 to the International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York in 2011, the Location One International Residency Programme, also in New York, in 2012, the Tony O'Malley Residency in Callan, County Kilkenny from 2019 to 2021, and the Steep Rock Arts Residency in Washington, Connecticut in autumn 2021, as well as periods in São Paulo. He also participated in the Artists' Work Programme at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. Temple Bar Gallery and Studios recognised his practice with Project Studio Awards in both 2010 and 2012.

Kaga is currently represented by Jessica Silverman in San Francisco, Maho Kubota Gallery in Tokyo, and mother's tankstation in Dublin and London. His exhibition record spans major cities across Europe, North America, and Asia. Solo presentations include Things Will Carry Us Through at Tanya Leighton in Berlin in 2023; The World Will Not End Tomorrow at Jessica Silverman in 2024; While I am touching the sleeping cat, I feel as if I know you were there at Maho Kubota Gallery in Tokyo in 2024; and I am here with you at Jack Hanley Gallery in New York in 2015. A commissioned solo exhibition, Just Another Human Experience, opened at The Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art in Dublin in November 2025, marking a significant institutional milestone. Forthcoming presentations include I Lost You at Tanya Leighton in Berlin and participation in The Image Burns, Distorts, and Sublimates into Light at the Ueshima Museum in Tokyo, both in 2026. Works by Kaga are held in the Ueshima Museum Collection and the Japigozzi Collection, and his practice was the subject of a 2025 essay in The Art Critic titled "The Poetry of Voluntary Exile."