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After being invited as Guest of Honour to the Florence Biennale in 2019 and receiving the 'Lorenzo il Magnifico' Special Commendation from the President, Japanese artist Liku Maria Takahashi returns this year to be honoured with the 'Lorenzo il Magnifico' Award from the President.

Born in 1963, Takahashi grew up in a family deeply rooted in art and spirituality. Her mother descended from a lineage of painters of the Ise Shrine, while her father came from a family of Buddhist priests with a 400-year genealogical line. Immersed from early childhood in artistic and ritual practices, she developed a profound interest in symbolism, spirituality, and presences that transcend ordinary human perception. After graduating from Tokyo Zokei University in 1993, Takahashi dedicated nearly two decades to contemporary sculpture, exploring innovative forms, materials, and concepts.

Takahashi’s work explores the interplay of light, shadow, and darkness as inseparable dimensions of human experience. Her philosophy is grounded in her experiences at the Mother House in Calcutta, witnessing lives lived in extreme vulnerability. Light represents hope, compassion, and resilience; darkness evokes mortality, solitude, and uncertainty. Understanding this duality is central to her reflection on the human condition. Takahashi’s practice combines traditional Japanese aesthetic sensibilities with global humanistic concerns, exploring mortality, empathy, collective consciousness and the balance between individuality and unity. At the XV Florence Biennale, Takahashi will present three works embodying these concepts.