The curator of the exhibition, Mika Yoshitake, who did not attend the opening in Shanghai because of the pandemic, says Nara's works reflect his raw encounters with his inner self, taking inspiration from a wide range of resources-memories of his childhood, music, literature, studying and living in Germany from 1988 to 2000, exploring his roots in Asia and the Russian island of Sakhalin, and modern art from Europe and Japan.

From a wall of album covers Nara began collecting as a teenager, to paintings, drawings, sculpture, ceramic and installations, the exhibition reflects his career spanning more than 30 years, from 1987 to 2021, shining a light on his creative process and evolution of style and ideas.

One of the paintings, Emergency, created in 2013, depicts a girl taken away on a wheeled stretcher amid the aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake of 2011 and the tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster that ensued.

"Nara lived only 70 kilometers from the epicenter and drove to the area near the disaster zone with his mother to deliver food and help those in need," Yoshitake wrote of the painting, which is "perhaps one of the artist's most personal images".