About Yuko Hasegawa Lab

　The “Hasegawa Lab” (Hasegawa Kenkyushitsu) is the group of MA candidates studying curation under Prof. Yuko Hasegawa in the Department of Arts Studies and Curatorial Practices at Tokyo University of the Arts (aka. Geidai)’s Graduate School of Global Arts.

Members of the Hasegawa Lab explore globally-oriented curation in both theory and practice. This website will be focused on the Chinretsukan Exhibition, an annual exhibition co-curated by a group of Geidai students under the purview of Prof. Hasegawa but will also include reports on students’ individual projects, essays, recent exhibitions, artists, and other cultural events of interest. With contributions from students both past and present (including MA, PhD, and independent research students), this website is set up in the hope to provide a platform to encourage the productive exchange of ideas.

Since the 1990s I have been engaging in various cross-disciplinary activities on a global scale, including international biennales and exhibitions, performance and film production in art institutions, as well as regional art projects. Among the multiple centers in today’s art world, Japan/Asia has proved to be an important one. As a curator based in Japan working on the world stage, I would like to share my own experience and develop innovative ways of curating with the students. I will also post reports on the exhibitions, projects, and research that I carry out abroad as well as updates from the Contemporary Art Museum, Tokyo (MOT) and Inujima Art House Project.

In continuously reexamining the meaning and role of art in contemporaneous contexts, this website is expected to introduce new facets of what it means to curate, to research, and/or to create from the perspective of Hasegawa Lab.(Text: Yuko Hasegawa)

Yuko Hasegawa　長谷川祐子

Yuko Hasegawa is Artistic Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2016 – present) and Professor of Graduate School of Global Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts (2016 – present). Previously, she was Chief Curator and Founding Artistic Director of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (1999-2006) and Chief Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2006-2016). She is also Artistic Director of Inujima Art House Project (2011-present).

Under Hasegawa’s leadership, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo has presented many of her exhibitions, including: Oscar Niemeyer The Man Who Built Brasilia (2015); Gabriel Orozco – Inner Cycles, (2015); Thomas Demand, (2012); Atsuko Tanaka – The Art of Connecting, (2012); and Trans-Cool Tokyo – Contemporary Japanese Art from MOT Collection (2011-2012). More recent exhibitions include Francis Alÿs – La dépense at Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai (2018-2019), Fukami : A Plunge into Japanese aesthetics at Hotel Salmon de Rothschild, Paris (2018), Saudade : Unmemorable Place in Time at Fousun Foundation, Shanghai (2018), Japanorama: NEW VISION ON ART SINCE 1970 at Centre Pompidou-Metz (2017) and Kishio Suga: Situations at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan (2016).
Hasegawa also has worked on numerous biennale projects, including: The 7th International Moscow Biennale : Clouds ⇄Forests (Curator, 2017-2018), The 11th Sharjah Art Biennial “Re Emerge – Toward a New Cultural Cartography” (Curator, 2013), The 29th São Paulo Biennial (Co-curator, 2010), The 12th Venice Architecture Biennale (Artistic Advisor, 2010), The 4th Seoul International Media Art Biennale “Dual Realistic”(Co-curator, 2006), Venice Biennale 2003, 50th International Exhibition of Art, Japan Pavilion “Heterotopias , Yutaka Sone, Motohiko Odani” (Commissioner, 2003), Shanghai Biennale 2002 (Co-curator, 2002-2003), and 7th International Istanbul Biennial (Artistic Director, 2001)

Hasegawa was an advisory committee member of Shanghai’s Rockbund Art Museum (2014-2018), an international advisory board member of The Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (CCA) (2014-2017), and a member of the Asian Art Advisory Board at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2008 – 2012). Currently she serves as an advisory committee member of Istanbul Biennale (2017-present), and an international jury member of the Nasher Prize, Nasher Sculpture Center (2015-present).
Publication; “Performativity in the Work of Female Japanese Artists in the 1950s-1960s and 1990s” in Modern Women: Women Artists at the Museum of Modern Art (2010), ed. Cornelia Butler, Alexandra Schwartz. New York: Museum of Modern Art. “Grotesque and Cruel Imagery in Japanese Gender Expression: Nobuyoshi Araki, Makoto Aida and Fuyuko Matsui” in The Persistence of Taste: Art, Museums and Everyday Life After Bourdieu (2018), ed. Malcolm Quinn, Dave Beech, Michael Lehnert, Carol Tulloch, Stephen Wilson. London: Routledge.