Two Argentine artists at the Aichi Triennale, a mega avant-garde festival in Japan.

Argentine artists Silvia Rivas and Adrián Villar Rojas are among the 60 international artists participating in the sixth edition of the Aichi Triennale , a mega-festival that promises to transform Aichi Prefecture, in the geographic center of Japan, into a haven for global artistic avant-garde. The urban festival will take place in several public spaces from September 13 to November 30 of this year.

Led by curator Hoor Al Qasimi , Sheika of Sharjah, one of the emirates, the event convened a selection of artists according to how their work relates to the concept A Time Between Ashes and Roses , taken from a poem by the Greek poet Adonis , which explores the human condition in relation to love, dogma, war and ruin.

"This curatorial approach both builds upon and fosters a different vision of the contemporary understanding of the environment as a reflection of the human imprint on it, not with it," wrote Hoor Al Qasimi in her curatorial text.

Since the 2015 Sharjah Biennial, Adrián Villar Rojas has captured the attention of Sheika, head of the Sharjah Art Foundation. This time, the Rosario-born artist took over an abandoned school in Seto City , a few kilometers from downtown Nagoya, with an installation titled Terrestrial Poems , 2025, where the most primitive humans, including Homo sapiens but also Denisovan man and Neanderthal primates, coexist with organic and inorganic matter.

As part of his project, the Rosario native has Graciela Sacco as a "guest artist," with several of her works and "urban interferences" sharing the same space.

Just before landing in Japan, Villar Rojas has just opened a major exhibition in South Korea. The Language of the Enemy took over the central hall of the Sonje Art Center with a sprawling, specially commissioned installation that addresses with great panache his concerns surrounding decay, mutation, and inheritance.

Known for her video installations, Silvia Rivas was invited to present Zumbido Dinamics , a series of pieces in which a swarm of flies perform choreographies that speak to time, the uncontrollable, and how life unfolds as a constant exchange with the environment. The series, presented at Malba in 2010 , gave rise to new pieces, some previously unseen, that will be seen in Japan.

"Humankind is an emanation of nature with its capabilities; it's not like we and nature are separate things," Rivas, who has more than 25 years of experience, told Clarín from Japan. "Sometimes we think we're more powerful than we really are, but if we stop and look, we notice how powerful nature is; that entire natural environment has a great power of regeneration."

Rivas was invited by Hoor Al Qasimi, who first encountered her work at a recent edition of arteba, at the Rolf Art gallery, which represents her. She recently had an anthology exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Bogotá, curated by Italian artist Eugenio Viola, prior to her major show at Muntref this year , Cronotopías , which addresses her investigations into space and time. In December, she was selected for the Meridians section of Art Basel Miami Beach, the mega-installation sector of the major fair.

"I'm interested, very curious, and excited to learn about this scene, which is very unknown to us, and at this moment when it's begun to intersect, to integrate... I think we can learn a lot from each other, to see the auspicious side of globalization," Rivas added.

The triennial, which has been running since 2010, also includes among its guests the Palestinian artist duo Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme , the American Simone Leigh , the British-Ghanaian filmmaker John Akomfrah , the sculptor Simone Fattal, the Sudanese painter Kamala Ibrahim Ishag and the Kenyan-American Wangechi Mutu.

A mega-exhibition that sets the pace for the themes of interest in contemporary art and reveals the connections and relationships that this new stage of global integration can generate.