Stories of women take center stage at the Cartier Women's Pavilion, a key attraction at Osaka Expo 2025
The Women's Pavilion, a groundbreaking exhibition space at Osaka Expo 2025, is a testament to the power of collaboration and the shared commitment to champion gender equality and women's empowerment worldwide. Curated and supported by Cartier, the pavilion offers an immersive experience that aims to spark dialogue, inspire action, and foster solutions for women's issues.
The pavilion is designed to be a sensory journey, incorporating elements of art, architecture, and nature. Yuko Nagayama, a Japanese architect, has wrapped the structure in a sunlight-filtering facade, while British artist Es Devlin has crafted a powerful internal journey that harmonises with the architectural design. The pavilion's exterior blends seamlessly with the surrounding mountains of central Mexico, using a natural scattering of moss, rocks, and plants to reflect the greenery and light.
Upon entering, visitors are greeted by a dome-like pavilion frame with a triangulated lattice freely filtering sunlight and wind. The path continues along the side of an earthen wall that brings to mind the open engawa corridor of a traditional Japanese house. The first floor is an escapist sanctuary, featuring a serenely curved rooftop garden filled with greenery and scattered artworks.
The main stars of the pavilion are Emmi Mahmoud, a poet and activist from Sudan; Banana Yoshimoto, an acclaimed Japanese novelist; and Xiye Bastida, an author, filmmaker, and climate change activist from Mexico. Each woman shares her personal story and messages through multimedia presentations, offering a powerful and inspiring narrative.
Mahmoud's story, hidden from soldiers, is presented through sharp-edged visual and audio fragments in a red-surfaced corridor. Yoshimoto's journey focuses on a life-altering memory and layered visual collages of her life. Bastida emphasizes the importance of water in the mountains of central Mexico.
The pavilion also features a unique interactive element: each ovoid aperture calls visitors by name, inviting them to enter and bear witness to the women's stories from the inside. The experience aims to delve deeper than surface-level statistics, creating a visceral yet connective perspective of women in the world today.
The Women's Pavilion is noteworthy as only the second women-themed exhibition in World Expo history, following Expo 2020 in Dubai. It underscores a vision that "when women thrive, humanity thrives," reflecting a commitment to ensuring women have dedicated space in global exhibitions. Visitors can engage with video and audio narratives of women from diverse backgrounds, outlining a wide array of challenges and hopes for the future.
In addition to the individual stories, the pavilion presents hard-hitting statistics about gender inequality, in collaboration with the UN Women's Department of Economic and Social Affairs. The pavilion experience culminates in a sanctuary, a curved room with a round table, its surface covered with rocks resting in water.
The Women's Pavilion at Osaka Expo 2025 is more than just an exhibition; it's a culturally rich, multisensory platform elevating women's voices and causes globally. After the Expo, the plants from the garden will be replanted in a forest near Osaka, symbolizing ongoing growth and nurturing. The pavilion also hosts over 150 events aimed at encouraging people to take action on gender equality and women's empowerment throughout the Expo period.
The Women's Pavilion, embodying a commitment to global women's empowerment and gender equality, has incorporated science and health-and-wellness elements by presenting powerful narratives from Emmi Mahmoud, a Sudanese poet and activist, and Banana Yoshimoto, a Japanese novelist, who share personal experiences that touch upon health, wellness, and social justice.
The immersive sanctuary on the first floor, filled with greenery and art, serves as a serene haven for reflecting on and discussing the issues faced by women, aiming to foster solutions and inspire positive change in health-and-wellness outcomes.
