©Takashi Kawashima

The Japanese-Dutch pianist and artist Tomoko Mukaiyama is praised for her multimedia performances in which she embarks on the sensory adventure together with her audience. Different disciplines, their forms and styles, are used and traversed on equal footing. Recurring themes in her work are gender inequality, the female body and the relationship with our natural environment, often elaborated from the possibilities and frictions of a local situation (EAT, 2022-3; figurante, 2023; Love Song, 2022). In addition to regular art centers such as the Lincoln Center New York, the Paris Opera, museums, her work is performed via online platforms, on streets and squares, private homes up to and including the Seto fish market (JP).

Tomoko won the International Gaudeamus Interpreters Competition in 1991 and in 1993 she received the Muramatsu Prize for exceptional musical talent. In 2014 she received the Dioraphte dance prize for the production Shirokuro. In 2017 she received the Japanese Dance Forum Award for the production La Mode and HOME. Tomoko lives in Amsterdam.

In 2025, Tomoko will premiere WE ARE THE HOUSE— evolving salon and a theatrical installation performance that reimagines the house as a space of creativity, vulnerability, and connection. Developed as part of the official Dutch cultural programme for the World Expo in Osaka, the work will be presented in Kyoto (JP) and at the Holland Festival (NL). In 2026, she will present her first solo exhibition at Arts Maebashi (JP), highlighting her interdisciplinary practice.

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Tomoko Mukaiyama Foundation

In 2007, Tomoko Mukaiyama Foundation was founded. The foundation aims to produce novel collaborations that are inspired by Mukaiyama’s artistic vision of intertwining different contemporary art and music forms. Thus, the foundation marries dance, photography, architecture, music, and more, towards the formulations of original aesthetic questions and conclusions. Hereby the organization also wishes to make its productions accessible to the wider public, both in the Netherlands and the international art scene. The Tomoko Mukaiyama Foundation operates as a producer of the projects of Tomoko Mukaiyama and has received multiple year grants of governmental support by the Dutch Performing Arts Fund.

board of the Tomoko Mukaiyama Foundation

The foundation consists of four dedicated members. Each of them has his/ her own field of expertise:
Chairman: Henk van der Meulen – former director of The Royal Conservatory in The Hague
Treasurer: Roland Kupers, consultant and advisor
Members: Aybala Carlak – Freelance journalist and media maker, specialized in economics and culture. Program manager at Stichting Democratie en Media.

advising committee of the Tomoko Mukaiyama Foundation

Britta Böhler– former Member of the Senate of the Netherlands
Ere Haru – columnist, former member of the Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
DJ Isis – DJ, consultant, coach, art director and programmer
Tetsuya Ozaki – journalist and publisher
Saskia van Schaik – former editor in chief VPRO Documentaries (Dutch broadcasting company)

Download: Biography Tomoko Mukaiyama ENG