A Curator Abroad: Dispatch from Japan

To be a curator is to travel. Travel often, even if it’s just down the road. In December, I was invited by the Japan Foundation, the cultural arm of the Japanese government, to participate in their Contemporary Art Trip to Japan. Its intended purpose is to introduce emerging and mid-career curators at American art institutions to Japanese artists, with the intent that the curators will incorporate these artists in their future projects. The Japan Foundation is a granting foundation that seeks to support exhibitions of Japanese art and culture nationally and abroad.

 

I spent ten days traveling around the country of Japan with four colleagues on an expense-paid trip to study contemporary art. It was like a graduate level course on Japanese culture but on steroids. While I have traveled around the world just to look at art and talk to artists, this was one of the most thought-provoking trips I have ever taken. It’s also one of the hardest to discuss. I was asked by MPLSART to write a travelogue of sorts about my trip to Japan. Rather than suggesting where to eat or where to stay, here are my art highlights:

 

Yoshiko Shimada performance, Becoming a Statue of a Japanese Comfort Woman (2012) outside of the Japanese Embassy.

Yoshiko Shimada

Yoshiko Shimada (born 1959) works predominately in video and performance that is centered around the cultural memories and roles of women in World War II as both victims and aggressors. Considered the premier feminist artist in Japan, she’s highly regarded for her own scholarship in Modern and Contemporary Japanese art. Meeting with Shimada on the first day of my trip was crucial. It provided a framework for what I experienced over the next two weeks.

 

Shimada studied at Scripps College (1982) and earned her Ph.D. from Kingston College (2015). Today, alongside her own artistic practice, Shimada is working on the Matsuzawa Yutaka Psi Room Foundation, a foundation that seeks to preserve the work of the artist Matsuzawa Yutaka, one of the founding fathers of Japanese Conceptualism. To learn more about Shimada’s work, visit Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo.

 

Installation images from Ishiuchi Miyako: Grain and Image at the Yokohama Museum of Art. Miyako is best known for her photographic depictions of women and the traces of their lives. The works in this image depict objects left after her mother passed away.

Ishiuchi Miyako: Grain and Image at the Yokohama Museum of Art, Yokohama

Yokohama Museum of Art was the best museum I visited throughout the entire trip. This might be because of the parallels to Mia — built by Kenzō Tange, the collection is encyclopaedic, and the programming is centered around the Yokohama prefecture. Even though the programming is community focused, the art and exhibitions are international in scope, with the Yokohama Triennial being a landmark in the global art fair/biennial scene.

 

When I visited the museum, I had the great fortune of meeting with Ishiuchi Miyako (born 1947), a photographer whose work explores feminine identity and labor. The survey exhibition, Ishiuchi Miyako: Grain and Image, was eye opening. Not only did Miyako capture the objects from her mother's life but from the women survivors of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima as well. On the tour, Miyako pointed out that the women before the attack were considered cosmopolitan and beautiful. After the attack, the women were considered damaged. She stated that throughout all of her work she strives for women to know that there are beauty and self-worth in the aftermath of trauma. To learn more about Miyako’s work, visit the Third Gallery Aya, Osaka.

 

Selfie with Kusama’s Pumpkins Screaming About Love Beyond Infinity at the Yayoi Kusama Museum, Tokyo.

Yayoi Kusama Museum, Tokyo

You probably know Kusama’s work, whether you realize it or not, from her polka dotted pumpkins to her fantastic mirrored rooms. The artist’s foundation opened the Yayoi Kusama Museum in Tokyo, and it’s as Instagramable as ever. The opening exhibition featured her latest body of large-scale paintings and installation rooms. Be prepared for lots of stairs! It’s a tight building with four floors and steep staircases.

 

Shigeo ANZAÏ, Kosai Hori, December 13, 1975, Photograph

The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo/The National Museum of Art, Osaka

The national museums in Tokyo are worth the visit, especially for their collections of mid-twentieth century works like those by Yayoi Kusama. But if you are looking for a more critical take on work by artists within Fluxus or Mono-ha, then I would suggest visiting the National Museum of Art in Osaka.

 

If you are not familiar, I advise taking a moment to explore both movements before you go to Japan. Fluxus, a radical and experimental conceptual movement of the ‘60s and ’70s, is known as an international movement; however, several key artists are from Japan, including Mieko Shiomi (born 1938), Shigeko Kubota (1937-2015), and (infamously) Yoko Ono (born 1933). Mono-ha was a Japanese movement that explored the connections and juxtapositions of form, natural elements, and industrial materials. Artists of note within the movement include Lee Ufan (born 1936), Nabuo Sekine (born 1942), and Keiji Uematsu (born 1947).

 

Yoshitomo Nara installation at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo. The Hara Museum commissions artists for installations in the museum and courtyard alongside its exhibition and collections programs.

Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo

If you’re looking for contemporary art, the National Museum of Contemporary Art is closed for renovations. Fear not! The Hara Museum is superb. With two locations (Tokyo and ARC, Gunma) the museum supports artists through acquisitions, commissions, and exhibitions. Most notable at the Hara are its commissioned installations by artists like Yoshitomo Nara at the museum located Shinagawa district of Tokyo.

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Two months afterward, I am still processing what I experienced in Japan. As a feminist and intersectional scholar, I am often told that feminism does not exist within Japan, yet that’s not what I encountered. It’s a different form of feminism than in the United States, as to be expected. It’s one that seeks to engage with histories not discussed or confronted. Artists who describe themselves as feminist are not as interested in individuality as with collectively discussing what it means to be women in Japan. It’s not that feminism doesn’t exist in Japan; perhaps it’s that we in the West are less familiar with the breadth of artists and art movements abroad.

 

 

Nicole Soukup is Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art and the Minnesota Artist Exhibition Project Coordinator at Mia.