斉藤陽子 | Takako Saito
Takako Saito was born in 1929 in Sabae City, Fukui Prefecture. She moved to the United States in the 1960s, joined the Fluxus community in New York, and worked as an assistant to George Maciunas, the founder of Fluxus, engaging in production, editing, and event management. Meanwhile, she created numerous unique alternative game works that encouraged viewers to play with the works using their five senses. In particular, her series of chess works, represented by Sound Chess and Spice Chess, are highly acclaimed as early masterpieces due to the innovative idea of players identifying pieces through smell, hearing, and touch. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) holds 16 of her works, including these and others. Saito was also a pioneer of participatory art, which relies on audience involvement. In her representative series You and Me Shop, which she continued from the 1960s, the work was not presented as a finished product; instead, she presented the process itself as art, where audience members chose materials, combined them, and made the work come to life on the spot through dialogue with the artist. After staying in France, the UK, and Italy in the 1970s and beyond, Saito settled in Düsseldorf, Germany, and continued her creative work there as her base until her passing in September 2025. Following recent reevaluations, she is named alongside Yayoi Kusama and Yoko Ono as one of Japan's leading female artists in the West. More than 500 of her works are housed in over 60 institutions worldwide, including major global museums such as MoMA, the Centre Pompidou, the British Museum, Museum Ludwig, and M+.