Sometimes the river is the bridge was Eliasson’s first exhibition in Japan in ten years. The exhibition featured key early works like Beauty (1993) and new works – including two major installations, photographic series, and documentation from several of Eliasson’s interventions in public space. The artist’s interests in climate action and alternative materials formed an integral part of the exhibition. In planning the show, a great deal of attention was paid to minimising the carbon footprint of transporting the artworks. To do this, artworks were selected for their proximity to Tokyo, and works that absolutely needed to be shipped from Berlin or elsewhere were shipped by rail or truck rather than air. Because the exhibition opened during the Covid-19 pandemic, the installation needed to be completed remotely, with studio members advising the local team over video conference.

Eliasson said about the exhibition: “Sometimes the river is the bridge is about a fundamental shift in perspective that allows us to see that which is not obvious, the invisible. In the face of the collapse of our planetary boundaries, there is an urgent need to redesign the systems in which we live, to re-engineer the future. For that to happen, we need to reconsider fundamentally how we see everything. Up until now, we have organized our present based on the past; we now need to shape our present according to what we want from the future. The potential of this perspective shift is that it can help us reconsider the traditional idea of progress.”