Yuka Numata fills an empty Japanese school with children made of beads

At Gero Art Discovery 2026, the Japanese artist brings back the pupils of a school closed in 2012, as suspended figures that only appear from the right angle.

feeldesain

14 October 2026

Replaying Afterimages by Yuka Numata: bead figures of children by the windows of a classroom at the former Yuya Elementary School

Wooden floorboards, a green blackboard, daylight coming through the tall windows of an old classroom. In the middle of the room a haze of coloured dots hangs in the air. Take a few steps and they fall into place: a child leaning on the windowsill, a girl in pink by the blackboard, a boy in a blue T-shirt standing alone in the middle of the floor. Move again and the figures dissolve back into dust.

The installation is Replaying Afterimages, by Japanese artist Yuka Numata, and the room belongs to Yuya Elementary School in Gero, in Gifu prefecture. The school closed in 2012, after almost seventy years, because there were too few pupils left and the building was not considered safe enough in an earthquake. Numata has said that on her first visit she seemed to hear children’s voices coming from the empty rooms, and she set out to give that feeling a shape.

Pink and green bead figures of children in front of the blackboard — Courtesy of Yuka Numata

Scanned children, plastic beads

Each figure starts from a 3D scan of a real child. Numata rebuilt the data point by point with ironing beads, the small plastic beads children fuse into patterns with a hot iron, and hung hundreds of them from the ceiling on fishing line. The figure only comes together when the eye lines the beads up from the right spot, which is more or less how memory works: you have to stand in the right place to see it.

Seen from the right angle, hundreds of hanging beads form a child leaning on the windowsill — Courtesy of Yuka Numata

Strings of coloured ironing beads hanging between school desks — Courtesy of Yuka Numata

The scans are not cleaned up. Numata keeps the glitches and the missing data, so the children look like holograms or afterimages, slightly broken at the edges. Error is a recurring subject in her work, from solo shows titled Reality and Error and Game Over to her imaginary supermarkets and burger shops. Here the glitch takes on another meaning: it is the part of the past that can no longer be recovered.

A bead figure reflected in an old mirror on the classroom wall — Courtesy of Yuka Numata

A festival across a hot spring town

Replaying Afterimages is part of Gero Art Discovery 2026, a new festival bringing together 59 artists from Japan and abroad across forests, historic streets and the Gero Onsen district, with the former school as one of its venues. Numata, who also showed in Turin at The Others art fair in 2022, has worked before for the Setouchi Triennale, another festival built around places that people have left.

Wide view of the classroom with several bead figures of children — Courtesy of Yuka Numata

Empty schools are becoming a familiar setting for art in rural Japan, where depopulation leaves closed classrooms in almost every valley. What sets this piece apart is its lightness. No nostalgia staged with old desks and class photos: only coloured dots, a few steps, and children who exist for as long as you stand still.

A child made of suspended beads standing against the green wall of an empty classroom — Courtesy of Yuka Numata

Bead figures among wooden desks and chairs in the former Yuya Elementary School in Gero — Courtesy of Yuka Numata

Close-up of the beaded strands, with a child figure in blue and white behind them — Courtesy of Yuka Numata

Replaying Afterimages is on view at the former Yuya Elementary School, Gero, Gifu, Japan, until 8 November 2026. More on the artist: yukanumata.com and Instagram.

Images courtesy of Yuka Numata. Via My Modern Met.