Final Exhibition at the Luxembourg Pavilion: “O” – A Photographic Dialogue Across Borders
A quietly powerful exploration of Osaka’s urban edges, seen through the lenses of two artists.
From September 24 to October 8, 2025, the Luxembourg Pavilion hosts the exhibition O – a collaborative photographic project between Luxembourgish artist Daniel Reuter and Japanese photographer Umihara Chikara. Created during a one-month residency in Osaka in 2024, the work is the result of an ongoing artistic friendship that began during their Master’s studies in Hartford, Connecticut (U.S.) and has continued across time and continents.Drawn by a shared interest in the layered histories of urban landscapes, the two artists initially turned their gaze to the site of Expo ’70, with its echoes of modernist and 1960s Metabolist architecture. However, the artists expanded their focus beyond the former fairgrounds. Their research led them to the city’s port area: a vast, layered landscape of artificial islands, industrial sites, and residential enclaves on the periphery of the metropolis. “In a way, the Bay Area is a neutral zone rather than a periphery,” said Umihara, who grew up near Tokyo Haneda Airport. “It’s a place of transformation.”
For Daniel Reuter, who first visited Japan in 2015 and today lives between Iceland and Luxembourg, the shift offered an opportunity to see beyond familiar images of Japan.
“I didn’t want to wander around the city collecting clichés,” Reuter said. “The Bay Area opened up new perspectives, shaped by movement, transitions, and the unexpected.”
The resulting images form a kind of visual conversation: fragments of landscape shaped by human ambition, memory, and the constant pull of the future – elevated highways looping through the air, fences marking boundaries, and waterways forming shifting thresholds between land and sea. Seen through the distinct yet complementary lenses of both photographers, O reveals Osaka as a city in flux, where past visions of the future meet the lived realities of the present. Through quiet observation and shared curiosity, the artists have created an exhibition that invites visitors to see a different side of Osaka — one that’s transitional, peripheral, and open-ended.
Presented in the spirit of Japanese–Luxembourgish co-creation, the exhibition is also accompanied by the publication of the photobook O by Roma Publications, extending the dialogue into print.
The exhibition O is presented with the support of Kultur | lx – Arts Council Luxembourg. It is the final exhibition featured at the Luxembourg Pavilion as part of the cultural programme during Expo 2025 Osaka.
