Curatorial Team

Artistic Director

TSUDA Daisuke: Tsuda Daisuke, born in 1973, was raised in Tokyo, Japan. Tsuda Daisuke is a professor at Waseda University, Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences. His writings cover the areas of media, journalism, copyright, content businesses, and freedom of expression. In recent years he has been reporting around the themes of solving regional problems, social entrepreneurship, and how technology changes society.
His published works include Jōhō Sensō wo Ikinuku (Surviving the information war, Asahi Shimbun Publications); Webu de Seiji wo Ugokasu! (Moving politics through the web!, Asahi Shinsho); Twitter Shakairon (Social theory and Twitter, Yosensha Shinsho yY); Dōin no Kakumei (Mobilization revolution, Chuko Shinsho La Clef); Jōhō no Kokyūhō (Breathing information, Asahi Press); and “Posuto Shinjitsu” no Jidai (The post-truth era, Shodensha), written with Yoshitaka Hibi. Tsuda was selected by the World Economic Forum (Davos) for their Young Global Leaders Class of 2013, and received the 17th Japan Media Arts Festival Entertainment Division New Face Award.

Planning Adviser

AZUMA Hiroki

Azuma Hiroki was born in Tokyo in 1971. He is a writer and critic, and is the former representative of Genron Company Limited. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
Azuma debuted as a critic in 1993. His areas of specialty include contemporary thought, representational culture, and information society. He is the author of many published works including Ontological, Postal (Shinchosha), winner of the Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities; Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals (Kodansha); Quantum Families (Shinchosha), winner of the Mishima Yukio Prize; General Will 2.0 (Kodansha); Genron 0: A Philosophy of the Tourist (Genron), winner of the 71st Mainichi Publication Culture Award; Yuruku Kangaeru (Thinking loosely, Kawade Shobo Shinsha); and Shin-kigōron (New semiotics, Genron), co-written with Hidetaka Ishida.

term as Planning Advisor: 9th August, 2017 - 14th August, 2019

Chief Curator (Head of Curatorial Team)

IIDA Shihoko: Iida Shihoko was born in 1975 in Tokyo. She is a curator based in Nagoya. She worked at the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery for eleven years since 1998 when it was preparing for inauguration. Major curated exhibitions to date include Wolfgang Tillmans: Freischwimmer (2004) and Trace Elements: Spirit and Memory in Japanese and Australian Photomedia (TOCAG, 2008 / Performance Space, Sydney, 2009). From 2009 to 2011 Iida was a visiting curator at the Australian Centre of Asia Pacific Art (ACAPA), the research arm of the Queensland Art Gallery and the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane. In 2011 she stayed four months in Seoul as a 2011 International Fellowship Researcher at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea. After returning to Japan she has curated a string of international exhibitions, including the 15th Asian Art Biennale Bangladesh 2012 (official curator of Japan participation); Aichi Triennale 2013; and Sapporo International Art Festival 2014. From October 2014 to March 2018 she was an Associate Professor at the Tokyo University of the Arts. Her areas of interest include contemporary art in Asia region, co-curation, and the relationships between society and art institutions such as art museums and biennials. She has worked on co-curated exhibitions in Seoul, multiple cities in Australia, New Deli, and Jakarta, among other places.

Curator (International Contemporary Art Exhibition)

NOSE Yoko: Nose Yoko was born in Okayama Prefecture and currently works primarily in Aichi Prefecture. She is a curator at Toyota Municipal Museum of Art since 1997. Exhibitions she has curated to date include Feature Exhibition: Kodai Nakahara (Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, 2001); Gardens (Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, 2006); Florescendo: Brasil-Japão O seu lugar (Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, 2008); Twist and Shout: Contemporary Art from Japan (Bangkok Art and Culture Center, 2009. Organized by the Japan Foundation), Junya Ishigami: Another Scale of Architecture (Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, 2010); Antigravity (Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, 2013); Hiroshi Sugito: Particles and Release (Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, 2016); and Building Romance (Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, 2018). She is a frequent contributor to the art monthly Bijutsu Techo and webzine Artscape.

Pedro REYES: Pedro REYES was born in 1972 in Mexico City, where he currently lives. He studied architecture and has published many forms of sculptures, structures, and projects incorporating aspects of theater, psychology and activism. Major works to date include Palas por Pistolas (Vancouver Art Gallery, 2008), which involved tree-planting employing shovels made from recovered firearms; Disarm (Lisson Gallery, 2013), which turned firearms into musical instruments; Sanatorium (Guggenheim Museum, 2011); and pUN (The People’s United Nations) (Queens Museum, 2013 / the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, 2015). Reyes is the recipient of a 2015 U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts, and a Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellowship. In 2016 he was appointed as a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is Dasha Zhukova Distinguished Visiting Artist at MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology. He has also worked on numerous exhibitions as a curator.

WASHIDA Meruro: Washida Meruro was born in Kyoto Prefecture in 1973 and currently lives in Kanazawa. He was a curator at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa until March 2018. He received his master’s degree from the University of Tokyo, where he studied art history.
Washida specializes in contemporary art history and museum studies, and curates contemporary art and architecture exhibitions and projects with a focus on the community and community participation. His major curatorial exhibitions for the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa include Kanazawa Art Platform 2008; Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa / SANAA (2005); Atelier Bow-Wow, Iki-Iki Project in Kanazawa (2007); Jeppe Hein 360° (2011); Shimabuku: Noto (2013 - 2014); and Sakano Mitsunori: Visible Breath (2016). He has also curated solo exhibitions such as Masashi Echigo’s show at Gallery Muryow (2017). He co-founded the NPO Center for Art and Architecture, Kanazawa (CAAK) in 2007, where he was a board member until CAAK was dissolved in 2017. He was the curator of the Japan Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, held in 2017.

Curator (Film Program)

SUGIHARA Eijun

Sugihara Eijun was born in Fukui Prefecture in 1982. He held the position of film and moving image curator at the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM], until March 2019. He completed his undergraduate studies at the Department of Aesthetics and Art History, Faculty of Fine Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts in 2005, and postgraduate studies at the Department of Film Production, Graduate School of Film and New Media of the same university in 2007.
In 2011 Sugihara became the program director of Auditorium Shibuya, a small independent movie theater that opened in Tokyo the same year (closed in 2014), actively showcasing independent film trends, while organizing thematic screenings from films all over the world, ranging from classics to contemporary. He joined YCAM in 2014 as a cinema curator, where he is responsible for organizing the YCAM Cinema film screening program, and selecting the contents for screening events such as YCAM Bakuon Film Festival, which screens films with subtle and high volume using professional high specification sound equipments. In 2015 he launched YCAM Film Factory series, a film-producing project where he produced and curated both films and art installations in YCAM.

Photo by Gottingham Courtesy of Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM]

Curator (Performing Arts)

SOMA Chiaki: Soma Chiaki was born in Iwate Prefecture in 1975. She lives and works in Tokyo as an art producer and the representative director of NPO Arts Commons Tokyo. She completed her undergraduate studies at Waseda University, and postgraduate studies at the Lumière University Lyon 2. In 2006 she became the inaugural director of the performing arts center Steep Slope Studio in Yokohama, a post she held until 2010. She was appointed as the inaugural program director of the international performing arts festival Festival/Tokyo, and held this post from the Festival/Tokyo Spring 2009 to Festival/Tokyo 2013. She served as a member of the Agency for Cultural Affairs Advisory Board for Cultural Policy from 2012 to 2015. She founded the NPO Arts Commons Tokyo in 2014, and currently serves as its representative director. She received the Chevalier des Arts et des Letters award from the French Ministry of Culture in 2015. Since 2016, Soma has been a Specially Appointed Associate Professor of Body Expression and Cinematic Arts, in the Collage of Contemporary Psychology, Rikkyo University. Since 2017 she has been the executive committee chairperson and director of Theater Commons. She produces and curates numerous projects that transcend the boundaries of theater, fine arts, and social art, both at home and abroad.

Curator (Music Program)

OYAMA Takuya: Oyama Takuya was born in Hokkaido in 1971 and went on to attend Hokkaido University’s Faculty of Letters. He is the founder of Natasha Inc. Oyama worked as an editor for magazines and websites at Mediaworks Inc. (now Kadokawa Corporation) for seven years before becoming the founder and representative director of Natasha in 2006. The company is known for its music news website “Natalie,” launched in February 2007. Oyama currently serves as an advisor to the company.

Curator (Learning)

AIDA Daiya: Aida Daiya was born in Tokyo in 1976. He completed his studies at the Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences (IAMAS), and worked at the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM), an art institution with a focus on media art, from 2003 to 2014, where he was responsible for education and outreach, namely the planning and operation of film screenings, community participation programs, media workshops, and outdoor installations. His work at the YCAM earned him the Kids Design Award Grand Prize, Good Design Award, and Jury Selections for the Media Arts Festival Award. In 2013 Aida joined the 13-member, seven-nation curatorial team for Media/Art Kitchen, a media art exhibition—organized by the Japan Foundation to mark the 40th anniversary of ASEAN—Japan friendship and cooperation—that toured Japan and Southeast Asia. For five years, since 2014, he held the position of Project Assistant Professor, teaching workshop design for the Graduate Program for Social ICT Global Creative Leaders at theUniversity of Tokyo.

Consultant

HOU Hanru

Hou Hanru was born in 1963 in Guangzhou, China. He has worked from Paris and San Francisco as an art critic and exhibition organizer, and in recent years makes Rome his home. Appointments include artistic director of MAXXI, the National Museum of the 21st Century Arts, Italy, and consulting curator of the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. He received his bachelor’s degree in 1985 and master’s degree in 1988 from the China Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.
The numerous exhibitions he has curated to date include Cities on the Move (1997 - 2000); Shanghai Biennale (2000); Gwangju Biennale (2002), Venice Biennale (French Pavilion,1999; Z.O.U.—Zone Of Urgency, 2003; and Chinese Pavilion, 2007); Istanbul Biennial (2007); and Lyon Biennial (2009). Recently he has worked on the Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (2017) and on Art and China after 1989, Theater of the World (2017). He also works extensively as lecturer, consultant and adviser for museums and educational institutes across the world.

Photo by Musacchio Ianniello Courtesy of Fondazione MAXXI

Designer

MAEDA Yutaka: Maeda Yutaka was born in Osaka Prefecture in 1972. He is the representative director of Uji Design. After graduating from Kyoto Institute of Technology he worked for the Hiromura Design Office and others before establishing his own design office. In addition to graphic design, he conducts projects in visual identity, editorial design, package design, and spatial design. Major projects to date include Koganecho Bazaar (2013 - 2017), The Universe and Art (Mori Art Museum, 2016 - 2017), and Toile de Jouy, Printed Textiles from France (Bunkamura, 2016). He is the recipient of the 2012 SDA Grand Prize Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Award.