Spread across more than 50 venues –connected by bus routes around the city– Art Week Tokyo offers an immersive journey through the intersections of class and power. This interview with Atsuko Ninagawa offers insights into how this year's exhibitions tackle themes spanning forms of social awareness, curatorial labor, and artistic legacies.
The theme of this year's Art Week Tokyo seems to resonate with the idea of intersecting personal and collective time. How do you see these intersections influencing the narrative of the event?
Atsuko Ninagawa: Art Week Tokyo doesn’t have an overarching theme. Each participating venue is responsible for its exhibition programming, while our special platforms are curated by guest curators. Any thematic correspondences among the programs are more about chance or synchronicity. Like the city itself, Art Week Tokyo is structured to allow each visitor to create their narrative.
In curating Art Week Tokyo, how do you navigate the complex relationship between local traditions and the global art scene? What are the challenges and rewards of this balancing act?
AN: Art Week Tokyo was conceived as a bridge between the local and global art scenes, so it sits at that intersection. A big challenge in Japan is the language barrier. Only a small fraction of Japanese art discourse is translated into English, and galleries don't often prioritize making English-language materials. At the same time, Japanese audiences aren’t following critical discourses in other languages. Our platform makes the local art scene more accessible to global audiences, opening space for negotiations between the two. This benefits everyone, although it requires tremendous effort in translation and contextualization from our team.
fig. 1
With Tokyo as a vibrant backdrop, what perspectives do you believe the city brings to the global art dialogue, and how have you woven these into the event’s framework?
AN: Tokyo is one of the world’s great cities. While it can be challenging to navigate, it also offers rhythms different from other cities, with pockets of calm amid the crowds. The city’s labyrinthine backstreets, filled with small shops and businesses, are perfect for exploration and discovery. That’s why we bring visitors to galleries in their local contexts rather than centralizing everything in one venue. Tokyo’s homegrown gallery scene has a strong sense of community, with galleries sharing resources and supporting each other. This allows us to show global audiences high-quality art on a more human scale.
Reflecting on your journey through the arts, how has your approach to bringing Japanese contemporary art to a global stage evolved, particularly in the context of Art Week Tokyo? What does this imply for the art practices and discourses you want to engage with?
AN: When I was in university, I wanted to start a nonprofit art institution, but as I learned how the art system works, I became drawn to the flexibility and independence of the commercial gallery model. I never imagined I’d be directing a massive, government-funded, citywide art event. In my gallery practice, I’ve focused on showing artists whose work resonates in both Japanese and international contexts, weaving together historical threads. With Art Week Tokyo, my goal is to prioritize the needs of the entire art scene over my vision. Sharing the diversity of Japanese contemporary art with the world is important because it’s one of our scene’s greatest strengths.
In your view, what is the role of curators in addressing social issues through art, and how have you integrated this responsibility into the programming of Art Week Tokyo?
AN: Art is inherently tied to social issues, so anyone working with art should expect to engage with them. While the curators of our special platforms, like AWT Focus and AWT Video, have full autonomy, we seek people who have something compelling to say about contemporary art’s place in today’s world. This year, Mami Kataoka’s AWT Focus exhibition, “Earth, Wind, and Fire: Visions of the Future from Asia,” offers a deeply personal yet thoughtful exploration of our cultural, political, and societal uncertainties. It reflects our vision of AWT Focus as a space for curators to experiment with new narratives of modern and contemporary art. Meanwhile, Sohrab Mohebbi, the curator of AWT Video, has chosen works that tackle issues like technological disruptions, the climate crisis, and alternative ways of being together. His program, “Between Contrail and Mountains,” is a timely yet poetic survey of contemporary art practices. Both Kataoka and Mohebbi will speak at the AWT Talks Symposium alongside Adriano Pedrosa, curator of this year’s 60th Venice Biennale, and I’m excited to hear them dive deeper into these topics.
For more info about the Art Week Tokyo visit www.artweektokyo.com
//
Atsuko Ninagawa is the co-founder and Director of Art Week Tokyo and Owner and Director of the gallery Take Ninagawa.
- Image Caption
Cover: Keiichi Tanaami, The Story of Death and Rebirth, 2019.
© Keiichi Tanaami, courtesy Nanzuka
fig. 1: Atsuko Ninagawa. Photo by Katsuhiro Saiki.
