Press

Hoor Al Qasimi (President and Director, Sharjah Art Foundation/Artistic Director, Aichi Triennale 2025)
Hoor Al Qasimi is President and Director of Sharjah Art Foundation, an independent public arts organization which she established in 2009 as a catalyst and advocate for the arts, not only in Sharjah, UAE, but also in the region and around the world.
She has curated major exhibitions for the Foundation and other international institutions, including the critically acclaimed Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present (2023). In addition to her role at the Foundation, Al Qasimi also serves as President of the International Biennial Association, President of The Africa Institute and President and Director of the Sharjah Architecture Triennial.

Kim Haeju (Senior Curator, Singapore Art Museum)
Haeju Kim is a Senior Curator at Singapore Art Museum who focuses on contemporary art practices in Southeast Asia and Asia. She was most recently the Artistic Director for Busan Biennale 2022, and previously was the Deputy Director at Art Sonje Center. Kim holds experience in curating numerous contemporary art exhibitions and performance programmes across various disciplines. Her curatorial approach emphasizes the consideration of the body, time and memory as key elements, while also engaging with topics including ecological perspectives, locality and its planetary connection through her research.
At Art Sonje Center, Haeju curated group exhibition Transposition (2021), Dust, Clay, Stone (2020), The Island of the Colorblind (2019) and solo exhibitions by artists such as Koki Tanaka (2020) Hwayeon Nam (2020), Donghee Koo (2019) and Lee Kit (2019) among others. Other exhibitions curated by Kim include two solo exhibitions by Shitamichi Motoyuki and Manon de Boer at Kunsthal Aarhus in Denmark, as well as Moving/Image, a three-chapter exhibition and performance programme that was presented at Seoul Art Space Mullae (2016), ARKO Art Center (2017) and Seoul Museum of Art (2020).

Kito Kengo (Artist)
Born in Aichi prefecture in 1977. Graduated from the Department of Oil Painting at Nagoya University of the Arts, then completed his postgraduate studies of oil painting at Kyoto City University of Arts. Currently a professor at the Kyoto University of Arts postgraduate program, and director of MtK Contemporary Art.
He uses readymade objects found abundantly in everyday life like hula hoops, cloth, scarves, and mirrors, and uses their colorful, mirror and lamé reflections, and movement made using motors and cycles to create large-scale installations as well as sculptures, paintings, photographs, and more methods of expression in his work. At this exhibition, he is showing his cartwheel galaxy series which has gone on from 2017 to the present day.
Major exhibitions include Kengo Kito: Unity on the Hudson (Hudson River Museum, New York, 2023), KAAT EXHIBITION 2022 Kito Kengo Lines ( KAAT Kanagawa Art Theatre, Kanagawa, 2022), DOMANI: The Art of Tomorrow (The National Art Center Tokyo, Tokyo, 2021), Reconnecting (Japan House LA, Los Angeles, 2021) and more.

Morie Kota (Director/Animator)
Founded MORIE Inc. in 2016, of which he is the representative. Active in a variety of fields including filmmaking, directing, and CG animation.
He created the Yorushika music videos for “Left-Right Confusion” “Spring Thief” and “Nautilus,” the GReeeeN music video for “Hoshikageno Yell,” the title sequence for the NHK morning drama series “Chimudondon” and “Hiyokko,” the Doraemon film “Nobita’s New Dinosaur,” Nissin Cup Noodle commercial “HUNGRY DAYS – The Final Episode” and more well-known works.

Akiyoshi Yasuda (Sound Creator)
An instrumental artist with a beautiful and evanescent electronic sound, layered with echoes of noise and colored with a range of emotion. As a personal lifelog, his memento series is based on memory and record, with a variety of works.
He has created background music for “That Lyric: Sakuragi An, I tried Haiku For the First Time,” starring Hirose Suzu; NHK evening drama “Fujoshi, Ukkari Gei ni Kokuru;” popular TV anime “Osamake: Romcom Where The Childhood Friend Won’t Lose” and the 2022 film “Bldg. N.” He has also remixed Moriyama Naotaro’s “Subarashii Sekai” into an ambient version. His unique worldview is gaining high praise from industry insiders.

Aaron Cezar (Founding Director, Delfina Foundation)
Aaron Cezar is the founding Director of Delfina Foundation, where he curates and develops its interrelated programme of residencies, exhibitions and public events.
Under his tenure, Delfina Foundation has hosted nearly 400 artists, curators and collectors in residence, across dynamic programmes from Politics of Food to Collecting as Practice. Cezar has also curated external exhibitions and performances at Hayward Gallery Project Space, SongEun Artspace, and as part of the official public programme of the 58th Venice Art Biennale. Independently and through Delfina Foundation, he sits on numerous boards, committees, and advisory groups.

Greg Dvorak (Professor, International Cultural Studies at Waseda University)
Dr. Greg Dvorak is Professor of International Cultural Studies (History and Cultural Studies, Art Studies, Gender Studies of Pacific and Asia) at Waseda University in Tokyo.
In addition to his 2018 book on postcolonial Pacific history, Coral and Concrete, he lectures regularly on art and resistance in Oceania and has published numerous scholarly essays. Having served in 2022 as co-curator for “Air Canoe: Art from Northern Oceania,” in the 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Art (APT) in Brisbane, he has also advised other exhibitions such as the inaugural Honolulu Biennial in 2017. Project35 (project sango), the grassroots network he founded, aims to raise awareness about the Pacific Islands region in Japan through art and scholarly exchange.

Nawa Kohei (Sculptor/Director of Sandwich Inc./Professor, Kyoto University of the Arts)
Born in 1975, and based in Kyoto, Japan, Kohei Nawa received a Ph.D. in Fine Art/Sculpture from Kyoto City University of Arts in 2003 and established Sandwich in 2009. He is now a professor at the Kyoto University of the Arts.
Nawa has also worked on architectural projects, including the art pavilion Kohtei. Since 2015,VESSEL, Mist, Planet [wanderer], the performance trilogy produced in conjunction with Belgo-French choreographer and dancer Damian Jalet. In 2018, his sculpture Throne was exhibited under the Pyramid at the Musée du Louvre in Paris, France. In 2023, Ether (Equality), a 25 meters-tall sculpture was installed permanently on Seguin Island on France’s Seine River.

Yamamine Junya (Curator/Producer/CEO, NYAW Inc.)
After working as a curator at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa and Contemporary Art Centre, Art Tower Mito, he established and directed ANB Tokyo. He later established NYAW Inc. to plan and consult on culture and art-related projects.
Major exhibitions include ‘Hello World: For the Post-Human Age’ and ‘ Resistance of Fog: Fujiko Nakaya’ (Art Tower Mito) and ‘The world began without the human race, and it will end without it.’ (National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts). Also, Meet Your Art Festival “NEW SOIL”, an art festival organized by avex; Music Loves Art in Summer Sonic 2022, a joint project of the Agency for Cultural Affairs and Summer Sonic; and Moriyama In addition to the KOBE Re:Public Art Project, which he co-curated with Mirai Moriyama, he also supervises art programmes and special features for magazines and television. Hhe has also written, lectured and served on numerous juries, and was a 015–2016 fellow of the program of MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology – Japan).

Murata Shunsuke (Project Manager of “ARToVILLA”, DX Division, Daimaru Matsuzakaya Department Stores Co.Ltd.)
After studying architecture in university, he joined the company in 2008 and began handling design direction for spaces like department store interiors and façades. In 2018 he joined Future Standard LaboratoryFuture Is Now, and in 2019 began project management at the Shinsaibashi Daimaru redevelopment project for large-scale art projects like sculptor Nawa Kohei’s collaborative work Ho / Oh, D-Wall by Panoramatiks (formerly Rhizomatiks Architecture), and more. Murata has been in his current position since 2021. He’s currently active mainly with art media ARToVILLA and incubation project Ladder Project.

Nagai Kiyohiko (Managing Director, Risk Advisory, New Business Promotion, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu LLC.)
With his knowledge of finance and industry, he proposes strategies, creates new businesses, does R&D/Business investment management system reform support service, and leads service launches and promotion work at Deloitte Art & Finance.
In the field of culture and art, he provides business evaluations for art festivals, drafts art-based business plans for large financial institutions, formulates art-based area redevelopment plans, conducts art asset management and succession for the wealthy, conducts business strategy planning for museums, and conducts project evaluations for art prize competitions.
He has written several books including, “New Reputational Risk: Management Theory – How to respond to the acceleration and proliferation of information in the era of SNS” (Chuokeizai-sha, 2023, co-authored), “Risk Management – Seize the change” (Nikkei BP, 2022, co-authored), “Business Management and Disclosure in the Era of Climate Change” (Chuokeizai-sha, 2022, co-authored), “A Beginner’s Guide to Space Travel (University of Tokyo Press),” (2018, co-authored), and more. He has published many papers and given many lectures, including “Preparing for the risk scenario in which non-green airplanes become ‘abandoned assets,’” “Applying industrial knowledge to credit risk management for airplane finance” (Kinzai Zaimu Jijo, Feb 15, 2021), “Analysis of the development process of the Cyber Physical System concept in the aviation industry” (Kenkyu Gijutsu Keikaku, Vol. 32, No. 3), “Extracting management indicators that affect airline credit risk” (58th National Nihon Keizai System Conference) and more. On the board of directors of the Space Liner Association.
　

Robbie Fitzpatrick (Owner and Director, Fitzpatrick Gallery/Co-Founder, Basel Social Club)
Robert (“Robbie”) Okuda Fitzpatrick is the owner and director of Fitzpatrick Gallery, inaugurated in Paris in 2021, which builds on the legacy of Freedman Fitzpatrick, founded in 2013 in Los Angeles.
He has initiated alternative art fair projects, most notably as co-founder of Basel Social Club (est. 2022), Salon d’été (est. 2023) and Paramount Ranch (2014-2016). He previously worked in Berlin as the director of Tanya Leighton, after completing his studies at the Gallatin School of Individualised Study at New York University. He is half-Japanese and half-American and grew up between Tokyo, Vienna and Washington DC.

Kour Pour (Artist)
Kour Pour(b. 1987, UK) is a British-Iranian-American artist whose visual language is informed by　longstanding, global traditions of intercultural exchange. By intersecting a wide range of material and aesthetic conventions that are connected to various geographic, cultural, and national heritages, Pour allows for a remapping of the standard understanding of “Eastern/Western” cultural exchange.

Jasmine Wahi (Founder and Co-Director, Project for Empty Space)
Jasmine Wahi is the Founder and Co-Director of Project for Empty Space, a nonprofit organization in New York City and Newark, New Jersey. Her multifaceted curatorial practice predominantly focuses on issues of femme empowerment, complicating binary structures within social discourses, and exploring multi-positional cultural identities through the lens of intersectional feminism.She is currently on the Faculty of Brooklyn College in New York City.

Emanuele Coccia (Philosopher/Lecturer, EHESS)
Emanuele Coccia is associate professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris since 2011. He has been Visiting Professor at the universities of Buenos Aires, Columbia NY, Harvard, Munich, Venice, Tokyo and Weimar. He is the author of Sensible Life (2010), The Life of Plants (2018), Metamorphosis (2021) and Philosophy of the Home (2023). His books are translated into several languages. He has written a photo-theory book with Dutch photographer Viviane Sassen (Modern Alchemy 2022) and participated in the making of and co-directed animation videos such as Quercus (2019, with Formafantasma), Heaven in Matter (2021, with Faye Formisano) and Portal of Mysteries (2022, with Dotdotdot). He has written two plays together with Frédérique Aït Touati and Duncan Evenou (Earthscape 2022, Météores 2023). With François Roche he made a video installation called “La Chambre des mémoires à-veniré (2023)
In 2019, he contributed to the exhibition Nous les Arbres, presented at Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris. He edited the catalogs of the 23rd Milan Triennale of Architecture and Design: Unknown Unknowns. An Introduction to Mysteries. He is writing a four-handed work on the relationship between fashion and philosophy with Gucci’s creative director Alessandro Michele.

Hasegawa Yuko (Director, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa)
Yuko Hasegawa is a curator, educator and writer based out of Tokyo. She currently holds positions as Director of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa. Her curatorial language is interdisciplinary, encompassing not simply art but also architecture, design, science and anthropology, and combined with global curating experience, allows her to view art as part of a single, holistic ecology. Hasegawa has also curated, either solo or in a joint capacity, international art biennials including the
7th International Istanbul Biennial (2001), the Sharjah Biennial 11 (2013), and the 7th
Moscow Biennale (2017), and the 2nd Thailand Biennale, Korat (2021).

Aoki Jun (Architect/Director, Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art)
Born in Yokohama, Japan, in 1956 and graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1982. After working with Arata Isozaki and associates, he founded Jun Aoki & Associates in 1991 (reorganized to AS in 2020). Subsequent works have included not only architecture such as a series of houses, public facilities, and fashion boutiques for Louis Vuitton, but also art work like and . Received Architectural Institute of Japan Annual Award (1999, 2020) and Minister of Education’s Art Encouragement Prize (2005). Mainichi Art Award (2020). Professor of Tokyo University of the Arts. Director of Kyoto City Museum of Art.

Hayashi Yasuta (Director/Arts and Culture Division, Agency for Cultural Affairs – Japan (BUNKA-CHO) )
Hayashi Yasuta has served as the director of the Agency for Cultural Affairs since July 2021. Mr. Hayashi joined the Agency for Cultural Affairs in 1994 and has worked in several management positions, including responsibilities for protecting cultural properties and launching the Power of Culture from Kansai project, proposed by Hayao Kawai, former Commissioner for Cultural Affairs, in 2003. Based on research regarding the promotion of contemporary art in Japan since August 2013, Mr. Hayashi was responsible for facilitating the Bunka-cho Art Platform Japan project (2018–2022).

Kato Izumi (Artist)
Born in Shimane prefecture of Japan in 1969. Kato lives and works between Tokyo and Hong Kong.
His recent solo exhibitions include Red Brick Art Museum (Beijing, 2018), Fundación Casa Wabi (Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2019), Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo / Hara Museum ARC (Tokyo / Gunma, Concurrent exhibition, 2019), SCAD Museum of Art (Savannah, USA, September 2021 [tentative]), WATARI-UM, The Watari Museum of Contemporary Art (Tokyo, 2022).

Moderator: Yamashita Yukako (Program Director, ACK)
Born in Tokyo in 1988 to a family that runs a tea ceremony utensils business in Kyoto. Completed an MA in Art Business at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London. After an internship at Sotheby’s London, she joined Sotheby’s Japan, where she oversaw the sales of contemporary art. From 2017 to 2022, she was the managing director of THE CLUB.
She has been a visiting professor at Kyoto University of Arts since 2020. She was appointed Program Director of Art Collaboration Kyoto and Kyoto City Growth Strategy Promotion Advisor in 2022.
　

Theaster Gates (Artist/Social Innovator)
Theaster Gates is an artist and social innovator who lives and works in Chicago. Over the past decade, Gates has translated the intricacies of Blackness through space theory and land development, sculpture, and performance. Through the expansiveness of his approach as a thinker, maker, and builder, he extends the role of the artist as an agent of change. His performance practice and visual work find roots in Black knowledge, objects, history, and archives.
Gates is a professor at the University of Chicago in the Department of Visual Arts and serves as the Special Advisor to the President for Arts Initiatives.

Hosoo Masataka (President and CEO, Hosoo)
Masataka Hosoo was born in 1978. After graduating from university and after a brief career as a musician, he entered a well known Japanese jewelry brand. After leaving the company to study for a year in Firenze, Masataka joined Hosoo in 2008. He has been overseeing Hosoo’s new endeavor in developing contemporary textiles since 2009. He is a member of the “GO ON” project, a unit consisting of 6 members, each a representative of a hereditary business in the traditional crafts. In 2014, Masataka was selected as one of “Top 100 Japanese Business Men” by the Nikkei Business Magazine. In 2016, he has been appointed as a member of the Director’s Fellow program hosted by the MIT Media Lab.

Izumi Reijiro (Vice Director, Chado Research Center/President, SABIÉ)
Second son of Izumi Soko, who is himself the younger brother of the Urasenke 16th Iemoto Zabosai. His tea name is Sorei. In addition to studying Urasenke tea ceremony, he is also active as a researcher of tea ceremony history and handicraft history. After graduating with a PhD in fine art from from Kyoto University of the Arts, he went on to work as a curator at the Sakai City Museum, and is currently Deputy Director of the Chado Research Center Galleries, Vice Principal of Urasenke Gakuen, Chairman of Wa-no Gakko, and President of Sabié. With a central focus on Urasenke tea ceremony, he is expanding his activities into a range of fields.

Kataoka Mami (Director, Mori Art Museum/Director, National Center for Art Research)
Kataoka Mami joined the Mori Art Museum in 2003, taking on the role of Director in 2020. She has also taken on the position of Director of the National Center for Art Research since April 2023. Visiting Professor of the Kyoto University of the Arts and Advisory Board Chair, ICA Kyoto. Beyond Tokyo, Kataoka has held positions at the Hayward Gallery in London, where from 2007 to 2009 she was the institution’s first International Curator; she has also acted as Co-Artistic Director for the 9th Gwangju Biennale (2012), Artistic Director for the 21st Biennale of Sydney (2018) and Artistic Director for the Aichi Triennale 2022. Kataoka served as a Board Member (2014-2022) and the President (2020-2022) of CIMAM [International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art].

Kikuchi Hiroko (Artist/Creative Director, NPO inVisible)
Born in Tokyo. Influenced by the avant-garde art movements of the 1960s in America (Fluxus, social sculpture), and performance art. Collaborated with local cultural institutions such as the Asia Arts Initiative, Boston Public Library, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Yerba Buena Arts Center. Also involved in projects both domestically and internationally that focused on social education and community engagement, including MIT List Visual Arts Center, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Berkeley Art Museum, Aichi Triennale 2013, and the Mori Art Museum. Graduated from the Sculpture Department of Boston University and completed the pre-doctoral program at Tufts University in the United States.

Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel (Director of Lafayette Anticipations)
Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel is the director of Lafayette Anticipations, a Foundation established by the Galeries Lafayette Group where she has curated several exhibitions such as the Marguerite Humeau and Jean-Marie Appriou exhibition, the 2021 Martin Margiela exhibition as well as the 2022 Cyprien Gaillard exhibition.
She was the Chief curator of the Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (RIBOCA) in 2021.
From 2011 to 2019, she was a curator at the Palais de Tokyo where she gave carte blanche to, notably, Tomas Saraceno for ON AIR (2018-2019), along with the carte blanche to Tino Seghal, which gave place to the largest living art exhibition in the world (2016).

Taguchi Miwa (Co-Founder, Taguchi Art Collection)
After working in field practice in social welfare and teaching , Miwa Taguchi took on the practical management of the contemporary art collection started by her father Hiroshi Taguchi, founder of Misumi Group, from around 2013. She organizes exhibitions of the collection in response to requests from museums around the country, and she established the Taguchi Foundation for Contemporary Art in August 2020 and started activities to enhance the public benefit of the collection, including delivery exhibitions to primary and junior high schools. She is interested in contributing to the improvement of people’s art literacy through the collection and in activities that lead to its introduction into education. She is currently an ambassador for the art platform South South, a member of the International Advisory Board of the São Paulo Biennial, a member of the Tokyo Gendai Advisory Group and a senior advisor to Startbahn, Inc..

Justin Yu (Senior Partner, Plan b Inc./Founder & CEO, Alife Holding Co., Ltd.)
As a serial entrepreneur and investor of multiple industries, Justin Yu was also invited to serve as youth advisory committee by Executive Court of Taiwan. In 2010, he founded Plan b Inc. (www.theplanb.cc), a consultancy and planning company that applies sustainable development as strategic principles. Over the years, they have proposed a wide range of solutions to both domestic and foreign well-known enterprises, non-profit organizations, government departments, and various other fields. In 2021, he founded Alife Holding Co., Ltd. (www.alife.cc), a company that provides residential and office rental services, and all kinds of lifestyle solutions.