Otherwise Gallery (アザワイズギャラリー), an art gallery in Omotesando, Tokyo, will hold "ANEMOIA" (アネモイア), a solo exhibition by artist Mayumi Tsuzuki (都築まゆ美), from Friday, November 20 to Saturday, December 26, 2026.
Tsuzuki works as an illustrator creating cover art for books, and in recent years she has mainly shown oil paintings. Starting from familiar scenery and everyday objects, she captures the time layered over them and sensations that cannot be put into words. Through detailed compositions and quiet light, her paintings depict a world where the boundary between reality and imagination becomes blurred.
This is her first solo exhibition at Otherwise Gallery in two years, since 2024. The theme is "Anemoia," a word for a strange nostalgia felt for an era one has never lived through or a place one has never visited. Layering images accumulated from films, advertisements and old photographs with her own sensibility, Tsuzuki paints memories that do not exist and unfamiliar scenes hidden in everyday life.
"ANEMOIA": Nostalgia for Memories Never Experienced
The scenery that makes us feel nostalgic is not necessarily something we have experienced ourselves. A scene from a film, an old photograph or an advertisement seen long ago can overlap in memory, and we sometimes feel a strange familiarity toward places we have never visited and eras we do not know.
The exhibition title "Anemoia" refers to this kind of nostalgia for times and places one has never experienced.
In her 2024 solo exhibition at Otherwise Gallery, "Whose Memory? 記憶のふち," Tsuzuki traced the outlines of memory. In this exhibition, she widens her gaze further and lets her imagination travel to times and places she has not experienced.
The paintings show a quiet room that has finished its role, a staged holiday season, and a nameless place between one destination and another. Though they extend from the familiar everyday, these scenes feel somehow detached from reality, with traces of absurdity, sadness and faint unease. Nostalgic, yet impossible to recall. Seemingly familiar, yet existing nowhere. Tsuzuki's scenery raises questions about the boundary between memory and imagination.
《Their Block》2026 / Oil on canvas / 652 x 910 mm
《At the Portrait Studio》2026 / Oil on canvas / 1167 x 910 mm
Comment From the Artist
"Nostalgia often contains 'memories that do not exist.'
The exhibition title 'Anemoia' refers to an inexplicable nostalgia for an era we have never lived in or a place we have never visited.
They are landscapes of foreign lands, where light and shadow intersect, that we once saw on a screen or in print. Even though we know they are 'already fiction,' we cannot help being drawn to them. They are idealized illusions.
In this exhibition, alongside such scenes of insubstantial nostalgia, I depict unfamiliar afterimages lurking right next to the familiar everyday: a quiet room that has finished its role, a ready-made holiday season, and a nameless passing point between one destination and another.
It is a space that feels like straying into a perfectly arranged facade, absurd yet sad, unsettling yet lovable. And it is also a 'memory that never was,' sleeping deep inside someone." (Mayumi Tsuzuki)
Exhibition Information
- Exhibition: Mayumi Tsuzuki Solo Exhibition "ANEMOIA"
- Dates: Friday, November 20 to Saturday, December 26, 2026
- Opening reception: Friday, November 20, 2026, 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
- Artist's scheduled appearances: Friday, November 20, 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM; Saturday, November 21, 1:00 PM to 6:00 PM; Saturday, December 19; Saturday, December 26; and other days
- Venue: Otherwise Gallery (アザワイズギャラリー), B1F Ohara-ryu Kaikan (小原流会館), 5-7-17 Minami-Aoyama, Minato-ku, Tokyo
- Phone: 03-3797-1507
- Hours: 12:00 PM to 7:00 PM (closed Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays). On Friday, November 20 only, the gallery opens at 5:00 PM.
- Exhibition page: https://otherwise-gallery.com/jp/tokyo/887/
About Mayumi Tsuzuki
Born in Tokyo in 1966. Graduated in 1988 from Musashino Art University (武蔵野美術大学), where she studied in the Interior Design course of the Department of Crafts and Industrial Design (工芸工業デザイン学科).
In addition to creating book cover art as an illustrator, Tsuzuki has recently shown mainly oil paintings in solo exhibitions and at art fairs. Drawing on memories of growing up in the Tokyo suburbs in the late Showa era and the influence of American paintings and literature, she captures the presence and emptiness lying beneath a peaceful everyday life as "American nostalgia," depicting a world where visual comfort and unease coexist.
Her main solo exhibitions include "Whose Memory? 記憶のふち" (2024, Otherwise Gallery, Tokyo), "Everyday Fantasy" (2025, GALLERY ROOM・A, Tokyo) and "Familiar Stranger" (2026, Ginza Tsutaya Books (銀座蔦屋書店) Art Wall, Tokyo). Her group exhibitions include "Japanese Pop Trio II" (2026, GALLERY508, Seoul) and "Layers" (2026, tagboat, Tokyo). She has also taken part in art fairs in Japan and abroad, widening the scope of her activities.
