MARTIN MARGIELA AT KUDAN HOUSE: a house inhabited by absence

Anonymity, imperfection, and unanswered questions guide Martin Margiela’s first large scale solo exhibition in Japan, unfolding room by room inside a historic Tokyo residence.

Absence is the main character here. In ‘MARTIN MARGIELA AT KUDAN HOUSE’, Martin Margiela turns Kudan House into a total installation, letting the building’s domestic memory shape how the works are seen. The venue, a 1927 residence in Tokyo, replaces the white cube with corridors, staircases, and rooms that still feel lived in.

Margiela stepped away from fashion in 2008, but the obsessions stayed. His practice circles the human body, traces, time, and transformation, using reuse and disassembly as methods and meaning. Collage, painting, drawing, sculpture, assemblage, and video appear across the house like interruptions: ordinary objects altered just enough to become unfamiliar, surfaces marked by patina, processes left visible, finishes intentionally unresolved.

The setting sharpens everything. Privacy becomes part of the work, echoing Margiela’s insistence on anonymity as a condition for creative freedom. Moving through the house, you sense the tension he prefers to keep open, the idea that art should plant questions rather than deliver answers.