Biwako Biennale

in Omihachiman, Japan, this year on the theme of FLUX, opened this Friday with my performance On the day of my birth within my multimedia installation 2nd Sky-Collective Dream.

I am happy to share my participation again at this year’s Biwako Biennale in the historic Old Town of Omihachiman, Japan, led by its founder and curator, Yoko Nakata. I am presenting my multimedia installation “2nd Sky – Collective Dream”  within which the Biennale was opened with my performance “On the Day of My Birth” . My heartfelt thanks to everyone who attended the opening within the unique setting of a 300-year-old former brewery, now transformed into the Machiya Club.

2nd Sky - Collective Dream

This installation exists in flux—between the sky and the ocean, between breath and thread.

Recycled lace and doilies, gathered across generations and geographies, form a fragile ecosystem suspended in space. These soft remnants recall invisible membranes that protect life—like the ozone above, or the microscopic skin of the sea that absorbs our excess.

Scientists tell us: a living film floats at the ocean’s surface, thinner than hair, full of microbes that breathe with the planet. This ocean-skin is porous, protective, and perilously vulnerable.

So too is this work. Each stitch is a wound and a weave, a soft organ of memory in motion. Lace hematomas—ruptured coral, hurt ozone—bleed gently through the air.

We live between the ocean and the sky.

We swim in the sky.

We fly in the water.

We breathe in flux.

With Arno Mitterdorfer, head of the Austrian Cultural Forum Tokyo, and curator Yoko Nakata,

and with the Mayor of Omihachiman. 

My thanks to the entire Biwako Biennale team for all their assistance — with special thanks to Barbara Karwat.

I am also deeply grateful to my collaborator, Hayato Nakao, for the remarkable sound work he created once again with my vocals (my installation would not be complete without his contribution).

And last but not least, my heartfelt thanks go to Yoko Nakata, the founder, director, and curator of the Biwako Biennale.

A special thank you as well to ArtEO (@arteo.earth) for providing the satellite imagery of Earth and Lake Biwa, which enabled me to create the special dialogue I envisioned.

Copyright © Eva Petric, 2025, Bildrecht Vienna,  All rights reserved.