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The running until October 13th will be at Expo 2025 in Osaka. This is the third time Japan has held a world fair. With over 150 rural pavilions, this year stands out next to the Japanese pavilions, the women’s pavilion collaborating with Cartier. By shedding a light on gender equality, Space is the second brand partnership with the Women’s Pavilion. When it debuted at Dubai’s 2020 expo, it was the first standalone women’s pavilion to be conceived by a corporate entity.
Commitment to women is a key aspect of Cartier’s corporate social responsibility program. In addition to partnering with UN women who work for gender equality, the Maison has a Cartier women’s initiative. It supports female entrepreneurs behind sustainable, social and environmental impact businesses.
The home has joined several other watches and jewelry brands that are increasingly focusing on women. On International Women’s Day in March, Pomerato launched its eighth annual campaign under the Pomellato for Women Initiative. This year, the company highlights domestic violence through a series of video portraits featuring well-known actors and activists, including Jane Fonda. Meanwhile, earlier this year, watchmaker Tag Heuer became the official timekeeper and partner of F1 Academy, a racing series aimed at increasing female participation in Motorsport.
This year’s Women’s Pavilion, like the expo itself, is closely aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS), with the Expo showing the five-year countdown to the 2030 target date for the initiative. Gender equality is ranked fifth out of 17 SDGs, and is a theme embodied by this year’s women’s pavilion. Leading architect Yuko Yuayama has remarkably reused materials from the Japanese pavilion, designed for the 2020 expo in Dubai.
Inspired by traditional Kyoto machiya townhouses with playful interior and exterior spaces, the women’s pavilion, featuring vegetation from local mountains, leads to the theme of inheritance, Nagayama says. “The issue of women’s empowerment needs to be carried over into the future,” she explains.
Also, links to the previous exposition are the artistic leads Devlin of the Pavilion. For this year’s women’s pavilion, Devlin “takes a side step from its national identity and creates an immersive experience aimed at seeing our identity more collectively, as women are 50% of the population,” she says.
Her vision highlights the journey of three women: Japanese author Banana Yoshimoto, Sudanese poet and activist Emi Mahmoud and Mexican climate activist Xiye Bastida. They tell of a maze-like journey fixed in various intimate objects (children’s toys), what Devlin calls the “memory palace,” which she hopes to induce individual reactions and experiences. “All these three women experience very profound sadness and pain, and they all realize that enzymes catalyze pain in agency, activism, poetry and life,” says Devin.
Yoshimoto states: “It felt like an opportunity, even in small ways, to attend rare events like expositions.” Regarding gender equality, she says she “strongly” and believes Japan still faces greater challenges compared to other countries. “The invisible constraints that spread in Japanese society are important. I think change must be promoted by the younger generation,” she says. “My hope is for visitors to recognize that women are entering a new, unprecedented era.”
Inspire the next generation is an important message. Cyril Vignolon, formerly the CEO of Cartier and now Chair of Cartier Culture and Charity, highlights “the importance of future visitors of all ages becoming changemakers within their community and beyond.” The Women’s Pavilion has several light touch company branding, including a virtual reality installation by French actor, director and Cartier collaborator Melanie Laurent.
The Pavilion also hosts 180 sessions and panels during the expo, covering themes linked to SDGS.
Later this month, Cartier will use the platform for the 2025 Impact Awards to celebrate the work of leading fellows on Women’s Initiatives.
Broadcasting station James Chau is SDGS of Goodwill Ambassador, the Hong Kong-based World Health Organization. I feel that global events such as the Expo are more timely and important than ever. “I am keenly aware of the risks faced by multilateral systems,” he says. “But because of the very challenges, there was no more important time to move forward and seize opportunities for meaningful change.”
Cartier’s participation in the expo is consistent with the value of craftsmanship, innovation and cultural leadership at the event, Chau added. “For a home like Cartier, such a major event is an opportunity to raise brand fame, but I see it as an important space for dialogue, understanding and tolerance.
Devlin, a Cartier collaborator since 2018, is drawn to the idea of a pavilion that violates the concept of national identity, and she says it is a “assertion of others.” “It’s like the Stradivarius that women have to play now. You find meetings, connecting, learning and talking. Hopefully, it’s a safe place,” she says.
