TeamLab Exhibition in Chiba Combines Light, Darkness, Nature, and a Sense of Vast Time

Outdoor Art

On April 17, the international art collective TeamLab opened an outdoor nighttime exhibition at the Yōrō Valley, a tourist spot in central Chiba Prefecture. Until May 24, visitors can stroll along the Nakase Promenade beside the Yōrō River, enjoying installations that make use of projection mapping and audio technology. As part of a prefectural initiative to encourage visitors to stay overnight, guests at nearby facilities can enter for free (the standard entrance fee is ¥1,500 for adults on weekdays).

The Yōrō Valley is renowned as a hot springs area and scenic spot. The clear waters are home to a great variety of life, and hiking and fishing are popular activities. The river basin also came to prominence as the location of exposed strata showing evidence of reversal in the earth’s magnetic field. This led in 2020 to the official recognition of the Chibanian age, from around 774,000 years to 129,000 years before the current era, which is named after the prefecture.

The Yōrō River in the early evening; the TeamLab venue is across the red Taiko Bridge. (© Nippon.com)

Flowers are projected onto a cliff with layers of exposed rock in the display “Continuous Life and Death at the Now of Deep Time.” (© Nippon.com)

TeamLab has previously incorporated nature into its art at outdoor exhibitions in Osaka’s Nagai Botanical Garden and rice terraces in Ibaraki Prefecture. The Yōrō Valley exhibition consists of 10 works that use the area’s scenic beauty to good effect.

The exhibition route follows a 1-kilometer hiking trail, including parts where visitors must pass through shallow water. A projected display of countless flowers blossoming and scattering plays out against the backdrop of the river and rock faces dozens of meters high. The artwork incorporates natural elements including Parmotrema tinctorum lichen, which can live between several decades and a century in locations with clean air, and a huge, decaying tree that has fallen in the river.

TeamLab representative Inoko Toshiyuki encourages visitors to immerse themselves in earth’s memory, saying, “You can sense the accumulation of a huge amount of time from the form of the Yōrō Valley, physically feeling your own existence on top of it.”

Trees constantly change color, reacting as people pass through the “Resonating Yōrō Valley and Forest.” (© Nippon.com)

Parmotrema tinctorum lichen, a symbiotic combination of fungus and algae, glows bright yellow and blue in “Crystallized Accumulation of Time.” (© Nippon.com)

A fallen tree represents the continuity of life at “The Non-Dual Mass of Life and Death.” (© Nippon.com)

Egg-shaped objects change color when touched in the “Forest of Autonomous Resonating Life.” (© Nippon.com)

Light is found in the depths of darkness overhead at the “Strata of Traces in the Yōrō Valley.” (© Nippon.com)

A waterfall suddenly appears at the “Universe of Water Particles in the Forest of the Yōrō Valley.” (© Nippon.com)

The “Constant Flux Pillar” is composed of light and undulates like it is alive. (© Nippon.com)

Words of prayer fill the cave in “The Eternal Universe of Words in the Rock Cavern.” (© Nippon.com)

Light makes the forest path look like a photograph in the “Cut Out Continuous Life” display. (© Nippon.com)

TeamLab: Yōrō Valley

• Venue: Around the Nakase Promenade, Yōrō Valley (Ōtaki, Chiba)
• Exhibition dates: April 17–May 24, 2026
• Hours: Around 6:45 pm–9:00 pm (last entry 8:20 pm)
• Admission fees: Adults ¥1,500 (¥1,800 on weekends and holidays); Elementary through high school students ¥800; Preschoolers free.
  See the official website for reservation details: https://www.teamlab.art/e/yorovalley/

(Originally published in Japanese on April 18, 2026. Reporting, text, and photographs by Nippon.com. Banner photo: A press viewing of TeamLab: Yōrō Valley. © Nippon.com.)