The Globalization of the Art World and ‘Japan’: What lies ahead for the advancement of contemporary art

Hirayama Naoko joined the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in 1994, where she first started at the Copyright Division of the Agency for Cultural Affairs (ACA). She is currently the director of the Planning and Coordination Division of the Agency for Cultural Affairs. Past positions include: director of the Culture and Economy Division (2021); director of the Arts Division of the ACA (2018); deputy director of the Sports Bureau of the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee (2016); deputy director of the Intellectual Property Strategy Office of the Cabinet (2007); assistant director of the museum office of the ACA (2005); and associate expert at UNESCO (1996).

©Ito Akinori

Kataoka was chief curator at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery (1997–2002) prior to the Mori Art Museum (2003–), where she assumed the position of director in 2020. Kataoka was also international curator at the Hayward Gallery, London (2007–9); co-artistic director for the 9th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2012); and artistic director of the 21st Biennale of Sydney (2018), artistic director of the Aichi Triennale 2022. She has been serving as a board member of CIMAM [International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art] (2014–) and was appointed the president of CIMAM 2020–22. Other positions include: visiting professor at Kyoto University of the Arts Graduate School; visiting professor at Tokyo University of the Arts’ Faculty of Fine Arts, Graduate School of Fine Arts; chair of Contemporary Art Committee Japan, Art Platform Japan [Initiative by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Japan]; and member of AICA [International Association of Art Critics]. Kataoka frequently writes, lectures, and juries on contemporary art from Japan, Asia, and beyond.

©Shintsubo Kenshu

Mohri Yuko works on installations that detect invisible and intangible energies such as gravity, magnetic and wind. Her major solo exhibitions include: SP. (Ginza Sony Park, Tokyo, 2020); Voluta (Camden Arts Centre, London, 2018); Assume That There Is Friction and Resistance (Towada Arts Center, Aomori, 2018). She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions held across the world. She is the recipient of the 67th Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists (2017); the Grand Prix, Nissan Art Award (2015); and the Asian Cultural Council’s 6-month grant to participate in a residency in New York (2015). In 2018, as an East Asian Cultural Exchange Envoy, Mohri visited four cities in China.

©Takano Ryudai

Yamashiro takes her native Okinawa as the subject of her art to create video and photographic works. Recent exhibitions include: Reframing the land / mind / body-scape (Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, 2021); Chinbin Western (Dundee Contemporary Arts, UK, 2021). Group shows: 11th Seoul Mediacity Biennnale (Seoul Museum of Art, 2021), Image Narratives: Literature in Japanese Contemporary Art (The National Art Center, Tokyo, 2019). Selected publications include: Circulating World: The Art of Chikako Yamashiro (Tokyo: Yumiko Chiba Associates, 2016) and Chikako Yamashiro (Tokyo: Yumiko Chiba Associates, 2012). Selected awards include: Tokyo Contemporary Art Award, 2020–22, ZONTA Prize at 64th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (2018), Grand Prize at the Asian Art Award 2017 supported by Warehouse TERRADA (2017). Nominated: Asia Pacific Breweries Foundation Signature Art Prize 2018. Selected public collections: The National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo; Tokyo Photographic Art Museum; Okinawa Prefectural Museum & Art Museum; Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art; and KADIST.

Uematsu has been curator of the National Museum of Art, Osaka (NMAO) since 2008 and previously worked as chief curator at Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art. She has organized numerous exhibitions at NMAO including, Danh Vo oV hnaD (2020), 40th anniversary exhibition Travelers: Stepping into the Unknown (2018), The Self-Portrait of Yasumasa Morimura: My Art, My Story, My Art History (2016, traveled to Moscow in 2017), Wolfgang Tillmans: Your Body is Yours (2015), and co-organized Andreas Gursky (2014). She was appointed as the commissioner of Japan Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale presenting Tabaimo and the commissioner of Japan at the 13th Bangladesh Biennale presenting Yoneda Tomoko and Suda Yoshihiro. Uematsu was awarded the 11th Western Art Foundation Prize in Japan for organizing the Wolfgang Tillmans exhibition held at NMAO.

©Ishihara Tomoaki

Kajiya is an art historian who focuses on post-World War II art and art criticism in the United States and Japan. After working as an associate professor at the Faculty of Arts, Hiroshima City University, and at the Archival Research Center, Kyoto City University of Arts, he became an associate professor at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo in 2016, and professor in 2019. He is the director of the Oral History Archives of Japanese Art and the deputy director of The University of Tokyo’s Art Center. His book, Formless Modernism: Color Field Painting and 20th Century American Culture, is forthcoming from the University of Tokyo Press. He edited Usami Keiji: A Painter Resurrected (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 2021) and co-edited From Postwar to Postmodern, Art in Japan 1945−1989: Primary Documents (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2012) and others.

Nariai is specialized in Japanese avant-garde art after World War II, and organizes cross-sectional and region-wide exhibitions that interact with comics, popular magazines, advertisements, and other hybrid reproduction culture and art. Selected curatorial projects include: Parody and Intertextuality: Visual Culture in Japan around the 1970s (Tokyo Station Gallery, 2017); Discover, DISCOVER JAPAN (Tokyo Station Gallery, 2014); The World of ISHIKO Junzo: From Art via Manga to Kitsch (Fuchu Art Museum, 2011–12).

Following her position as a registrar at Pola Art Museum, Kawaguchi has been working at the National Museum of Western Art since 2003, where she has been responsible for the collection data management of works of art and books held by the museum. She has co-authored two volumes of The Matsukata Collection: Complete Catalogue of the European Art (Tokyo: The National Museum of Western Art, 2018–19), and has published essays such as “The Matsukata Collection Sales and the Practice of Personal Asset Forfeiture by Company Executives” included in The Matsukata Collection: A One-Hundred-Year Odyssey exhibition catalogue (Tokyo: The National Museum of Western Art, 2019) and “Compilation of the Matsukata Collection Catalogue Raisonné and Documentation of Works of Art” (The Bulletin of Japan Art Documentation Society, 2020). Kawaguchi currently serves as the secretary of the Japanese Council of Art Museums Information and Resources Study Group and is a committee member of the “Study Group to Consider Attractive Exhibits and Operations of a New National Archive,” initiated by the Cabinet Office of the Government of Japan. Kawaguchi is a recipient of the 15th Western Art Promotion Foundation Academic Award (2020).

©Yamamoto Naoaki

Since 2000, Odate has managed many leading Japanese artists, including Araki Nobuyoshi, Morimura Yasumasa, Kasahara Emiko, and Yanagi Miwa. She has also served as an editor of online magazine ART iT since 2010. She was a Curatorial Associate of the Yokohama Triennale 2014. Her other art exhibitions and events include Miwa Yanagi: Windswept Woman—The Old Girls’ Troupe (Japan Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 2008), Yasumasa Morimura: Theater of Self (Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, 2013), Nobuyoshi Araki: Ojo Shashu (Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Niigata City Art Museum, Shiseido Gallery, et al, 2014).