Emi Kusano: End of Nostalgia is a large-scale museum solo exhibition at Hyper Museum Hanno, the contemporary art museum inside metsä Village in Hanno, Saitama, Japan. It runs from Saturday, November 14, 2026, to Sunday, January 31, 2027, and is closed January 12–14, 2027. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Japan time, with last entry 30 minutes before closing. Timed advance tickets went on sale October 23: ¥1,000 for adults and ¥500 for ages 4 to 18. At the door, it’s ¥1,200 and ¥700.
NFT collectors should pay attention because of Ornament Survival. That’s the series Kusano showed with Tokyo gallery √K Contemporary in the Zero 10 digital sector at Art Basel Hong Kong in March, where works were offered as physical pieces paired with NFTs. A six-work Ethereum release followed on Verse. The museum says End of Nostalgia will hang about 25 Ornament Survival prints, including works never shown before, next to new installations. Below: what’s in the show, how to get tickets, and where the onchain side of the work lives.
What’s in End of Nostalgia
According to the museum’s October 20 announcement, the exhibition is built mostly from new work, and the gallery itself is designed as one immersive installation:
- Memory Metabolism: a large installation made of stacked TV monitors (new).
- Mementoid: a three-dimensional work (new).
- Ornament Survival: Future Remains: a new print series.
- About 25 Ornament Survival prints, including previously unexhibited works, from the series the museum notes was praised at Art Basel.
The show’s Japanese tagline on the key visual reads “AI wa renzu no nai kamera,” or “AI is a camera without a lens.” The same idea echoes in the title of Kusano’s new book (more on that below).
Who Emi Kusano is
Kusano was born in Tokyo in 1990 and works with AI to create what the museum calls “possible pasts and memories,” including eras from before she was born. She works from Japanese street subcultures from different decades, such as Takenoko-zoku, gyaru, decora and Gothic Lolita, and generates, selects and edits images over and over. The museum’s English release quotes her describing that practice as “my small resistance as an artist against a homogenizing world, and a form of play.”
Her career started with Harajuku street photography, which was later shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. According to the museum’s bio, she has exhibited in more than 20 countries, at institutions including M+ in Hong Kong, Saatchi Gallery in London, Grand Palais Immersif in Paris and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, and at fairs including Frieze and Paris Photo. She has taken part in the official art project for Ghost in the Shell and in collaborative auctions with Christie’s and Gucci, and with UNHCR. The World Economic Forum named her a Young Global Leader in 2025 and a Cultural Leader in 2026. She now sits on the copyright subcommittee of the Cultural Council at Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs, where she helps lead discussion of authorship and rights in the AI era. She also leads the music project Satellite Young, which has played SXSW.
Ornament Survival and the NFT side
Ornament Survival is the part of the show onchain collectors are most likely to know. According to the series text on Kusano’s site and on Verse, she built a custom AI model trained on her own face and body, then had her generated clones play uniformed roles like nurses and flight attendants. The work plays on two meanings of “model”: the role models women have been expected to live up to, and the AI models trained on their data. The series also takes on henshin, the magical-girl transformation of Japanese anime, and treats it less as a miracle and more as a survival strategy inside systems run by algorithms.
At Art Basel Hong Kong 2026, √K Contemporary presented Ornament Survival as an installation in the Zero 10 sector. It centered on a monumental sculpture inspired by the magical compacts of 1990s anime. The artist’s pre-sale page for the fair listed large prints on paper in aluminum frames, medium prints on acrylic board and sculpture, each paired with an NFT, plus video in an edition of five. For background on why that fair sector matters, see our piece on Art Basel Zero 10 and digital art fair infrastructure.
The onchain release lives on Verse, presented by √K Contemporary: six ERC-721 works on Ethereum, released June 3, 2026. Verse also lists other Kusano series, including EGO IN THE SHELL and Plastic Nirvana: Residual Signal.
Before you buy anything tied to the show: the museum’s announcement doesn’t say whether works in End of Nostalgia are for sale or come with NFTs, so don’t assume they do. If you want an Ornament Survival token, start from the Verse series page or Kusano’s own site, and check the contract there instead of trusting links shared in replies or DMs.
How to visit and get tickets
- Where: Hyper Museum Hanno, metsä Village, 327-6 Miyazawa, Hanno, Saitama 357-0001, Japan.
- Dates: November 14, 2026 – January 31, 2027. Closed January 12–14, 2027.
- Hours: 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. Japan time. Last entry 30 minutes before closing.
- Advance tickets (timed entry): adults ¥1,000, ages 4–18 ¥500, tax included. On sale from October 23 at Asoview!, ArtSticker, Lawson Ticket and Seven Ticket.
- Same-day tickets: adults ¥1,200, ages 4–18 ¥700, sold at the museum ticket booth from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Hyper Museum Hanno opened on March 1, 2025. It sits inside metsä Village, a Nordic lifestyle complex next to Moominvalley Park, and its director is Shigeo Goto, a Kyoto University of the Arts professor. The exhibition is sponsored by FinTech Global Incorporated, and the release lists the Takahashi Ryutaro Collection and √K Contemporary among its cooperating partners.
Kusano’s book Renzu no nai shashinron: End of Nostalgia (English title in the release: Photography Without Lenses: End of Nostalgia) is due from Japanese publisher BNN on November 18, 2026. It runs 288 pages.
Why this show matters for onchain art
Most AI-and-NFT work reaches people as a JPEG in a feed. End of Nostalgia puts one artist’s onchain series into a full museum installation in Japan, the country whose idols, uniforms and magical girls that series rewrites. It also lands as more institutions make room for digital work. The Centre Pompidou has set up a digital art acquisitions committee, and Rhizome’s net art anniversary show brought browser-based work back into the gallery. For more artists and exhibitions like this, browse our NFT art coverage.