The New Museum presents the US institutional debut of London- and Tokyo-based artist Umi Ishihara (b. 1993, Tokyo).
Marking the return of Screens Series, the New Museum presents the US institutional debut of London- and Tokyo-based artist Umi Ishihara (b. 1993, Tokyo). This program brings together three recent works: Gravity and Radiance (2021), Thundergod (2024), and Nocturnal Melody (2026), her most recent film commissioned by Gasworks, London. Across these works, Ishihara combines intimate observation, personal and collective histories, and elements of the surreal to explore experiences of precarity, desire, and belonging, and the ways communities take shape around them.
Ishihara’s experimental narrative films weave personal memory together with broader social realities. Shaped in part by an upbringing immersed in Japan’s underground nightlife and free-rave culture, her practice moves fluidly between fiction and documentary. She often works in close collaboration with non-professional actors, local residents, and people from her immediate surroundings.