Atsuya Tominaga to Take Part in the Art Program of Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai

On Thursday, February 13, 2025, at the media presentation for "Study: Osaka Kansai International Art Festival 2025," the art program linking the Expo and the wider Osaka area, Atsuya Tominaga took the stage as a public art artist for the Expo site.

This festival, which serves to connect Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai with the wider Osaka area, will be held as "a festival that studies the relationship between people, art and society" through art projects from Japan and abroad. 

In "Love Stone Project 2025," in which Mr. Tominaga takes part during the Expo, people from all over the world visiting the Expo will together polish stones from the five continents carved into the image of a heart.



The process of polishing the stones
The stones come to a brilliant shine when polished with abrasives in seven grades (120, 240, 400, 800, 1500, 3000, 6000). In this project, the seven grades of abrasive will be provided at the site throughout the Expo, and participants will take them in hand and wet-polish while touching the stones. The polishing period runs from the opening of the Expo in April to its close in October: the stones of the five continents, rough at first, will be shining by the end, and along the way the stones will show a different charm at each stage, to the delight of visitors.

The scheduled dates are as follows (provisional):

- Open from 10:00 to 15:00 on event days (cancelled in bad weather)
- Free participation
- No reservation required

[Official press release]
https://osaka-kansai.art/blogs/news/release250213

What is Love Stone Project EXPO 2025?
"Love Stone Project" is an art project by Atsuya Tominaga in which heart-shaped stones he has carved are polished together with the people he meets in each place, and made to shine with everyone's feelings. After the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, the sculptor visited the stricken towns of Tohoku, touched the stones that had witnessed everything that happened, and realized that stones and people alike are part of nature. Wishing that the world might become one through stone, he began the activity of polishing heart-shaped stones. In 2013, "Our Love," for which stones from Italy, Iran and the former Yugoslavia were polished with citizens, won the Grand Prize at the 25th UBE Biennale (International Sculpture Competition), which led him to take up the project in earnest around the world. To date the project has been held at some 200 locations in Japan and in the United States, Italy, Spain, Mexico, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bhutan, Ethiopia and elsewhere, with more than 20,000 participants.