Kaoru Kuribayashi is a tea practitioner, interdisciplinary artist, and arts and culture program coordinator at the Japan Foundation, Los Angeles. Rooted in her training in Chanoyu (Japanese tea ceremony), which she began at age ten, her work engages with traditional forms as living, evolving practices.
She holds master’s degrees from Goldsmiths, University of London (2020) and UCLA (2024), where she researched how Japanese traditional culture articulates concepts of mindfulness, ritual, and transcendental experience within a global contemporary context.
Kuribayashi’s practice traverses tea, fabric, performance, and meditative installation, focusing on the micro-gestures and sensory precision embedded in craft. She explores how traditional Japanese arts can activate expanded modes of engagement—prompting shifts in attention, slowness, and embodied reflection.
Her approach resists static preservation, instead positioning tradition as a porous system—open to reinterpretation, quiet intervention, and cross-cultural dialogue. She has performed tea ceremonies and created participatory experiences in galleries and institutions across the U.S., U.K., and Japan.