First published: December 2025
Ateliers and studios across Japan are using the power of art and togetherness to help people with learning disabilities establish roots and flourish.
Japanese society tends to place a high value on harmony, and maintains a culture of pre-established order, favouring collective conformity over the individualism typical of Western contexts. This tendency surfaces in the arts, where questions arise around the meaning of originality, and the dilemma of aesthetic judgements that treat artworks as detached objects. Within this context, creative ateliers for people with disabilities, in welfare, education and healthcare settings, pre-date the adoption of terms like art brut or outsider art in Japan.
Koji Nishioka at work on his current, ongoing artwork, 2018
By RENA KANO
This is an article extract; read the full article in Raw Vision 125.
