NAOKO TANAKA studied fine arts at the Tokyo University of the Arts and came to Germany in 1999 as a scholarship holder at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Since then, she has been developing performances and installations that closely combine choreography and visual art. She was invited to the Tanzplattform Deutschland in 2010, along with the artist collective Ludica. and the choreographer Morgan Nardi. In 2011, Naoko Tanaka created her first solo piece Die Scheinwerferin, which was successfully performed throughout Europe. The piece received the Prix Jardin d'Europe 2012 as well as the ZKB Anerkennungspreis at the Zürcher Theaterspektakel. In 2012 the performance was also shown at Sophiensælen, followed by the premiere of Absolute Helligkeit in the same year. With Unverinnerlicht (2015), she completed her shadow trilogy, which was shown in its entirety in 2017. Most recently, Tanaka showed the work Still Lives (2018) at the Sophiensælen. Here she realized the conceptual, as well as the spatial and sound design.