EDITORIAL · ABOUTArt Flow · 2026

About Art Flow

Art Flow is an art initiative based in Yaeyama, connecting art, place, and people.

Yaeyama is home to a rich natural environment, and to traditional and spiritual cultures that have been passed down through generations. These cultures are not only part of the past; they continue to live within everyday life today.

Located at the southernmost edge of Japan, the islands of Yaeyama hold a distinct sense of place, forming a fertile ground for artistic expression.

With art from Yaeyama at the center, we work through exhibition planning, artist support, art subscription, publishing, and media activities to create a system in which art can circulate through the region.

Toward an island where art flows.

Vision

A future in which the creativity born of a placecirculates beyond its own generation and region.

Mission

Through art, we connect people to peopleand place to place,cultivating conditions in which creative workcan keep on happening.

Values

Rooted in Place: Holding the culture and climate of Yaeyama close.
Build for the Long Term: Making structures that last,and tending the ground they grow from.
Create Connections: Binding people and places around art,and opening what was not there before.
Flow: Creating conditions in which making and joy circulate.

Our StoryFounder's Note

I moved from Tokyo to Ishigaki Island in the summer of 2022. I love nature and living things, and I came for this island ringed by clear blue sea — but living here, I noticed something. A great many people on these islands are making something. The untouched nature of the Yaeyama Islands, the traditional culture and performing arts that people have protected and handed down, the spirituality those things nourish. And drawn by all of it, a large number of artists are working from the inspiration this place gives them.

At the same time, I saw that on an island with no art museum, work is made but has few places to be seen — and so the cycle of being known, valued and cared for is difficult to set in motion.

I started Art Flow wanting to build the groundwork: a point of contact between the rich expression born here and someone ready to receive it, so that an ecosystem passed on to the next generation can form of its own accord.

Toward a future in which creativity circulates — within the island, and beyond generations and regions.

We are building the mechanisms that make an island where art flows real.

Art Flow FounderAsumi Murakami

Team

Asumi Murakami 村上あす美

Founder / Curator

Moved from Tokyo to Ishigaki Island in 2022. Drawing on experience in exhibition production, cultural facility management and regional projects, she continues to bring the art born of Yaeyama's climate to audiences on and beyond the islands. Raising a child while building the structures that carry Yaeyama's art forward as a cultural resource.

Atsushi Fukuzato 福里淳

Editorial / Media Director

Born on Ishigaki Island. Former editor-in-chief and head of media at Gekkan Yaima, a local publication covering Ishigaki and the Yaeyama Islands. With a background in regional editing, print-and-web planning and information design, he leads editorial design, publicity and archive design at Art Flow.

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