UP Gallery is pleased to return to Tokyo Gendai 2026 with Beyond the Image: Memory, Material, and Migration, presented in the fair’s newly introduced MIKI Sector.

The exhibition brings together works by Mia Liu, Arthur Ou, Mona Kuhn, and Cristina de Middel, whose practices collectively challenge the conventional understanding of what a photograph can be.

At the centre of the presentation is Mia Liu, whose sculptural works transform photographs into three-dimensional objects that shift according to the viewer’s movement and perspective. Rejecting the photograph as a singular flat surface, her practice encourages audiences to engage with images as physical forms occupying real space.

Approaching the medium from a different perspective, Arthur Ou investigates migration, family history, and cultural inheritance through works that draw upon photography’s historical processes and visual traditions. Existing between documentary and archival, his practice reflects on how memory continues to shape ideas of identity and belonging.

The exhibition further traces photography’s dialogue with its own history through works by Mona Kuhn and Cristina de Middel. Kuhn revisits the historic technique of solarisation, reinterpreting one of photography’s most iconic processes through a contemporary sensibility. De Middel, meanwhile, examines the blurred boundaries between fact and fiction, questioning photography’s long-held relationship with truth through carefully constructed visual narratives.

Although each artist employs a distinct methodology, their practices are united by a shared vision to expand photography beyond the image itself. Historical techniques, sculptural interventions, material experimentation, and conceptual inquiry coexist throughout the presentation, revealing photography not as a fixed discipline but as a continually evolving medium.

Returning to Tokyo Gendai for its second participation, UP Gallery hopes to foster dialogue with collectors, curators, and audiences interested in photography’s future. By bringing together artists working across different generations and approaches, the gallery invites visitors to reconsider the possibilities of image-making and the increasingly fluid boundaries of contemporary photography.