PARASOPHIA 京都国際現代芸術祭2015

Parasophia presents a talk by artistic director Shinji Kohmoto.

Shinji Kohmoto
Artistic Director, Parasophia: Kyoto International Festival of Contemporary Culture 2015
Former Chief Curator, The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto

Born in Kyoto. Completed the Master’s Program in Design at the Graduate School of Engineering and Design, Kyoto Institute of Technology. Curator at the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto since 1981; Chief Curator from 2006 to 2010. Kohmoto was one of the four Artistic Directors of Yokohama 2001: International Triennale of Contemporary Art (2001), the first Yokohama Triennale, subtitled Mega-Wave—Towards a New Synthesis, with fellow artistic directors Nobuo Nakamura, Fumio Nanjo, and Akira Tatehata. He was also on the jury for the Golden Lion for Best National Participation at the 50th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale (2003), and the selection committee for the artistic director of Documenta 12 (2007). Exhibitions curated by Kohmoto include Against Nature: Japanese Art in the Eighties (1989), a landmark presentation of contemporary Japanese Art that he co-curated with Kathy Halbreich, Thomas Sokolowski, and Fumio Nanjo, which toured across the United States until 1991; Project for Survival (1996), a cutting-edge exhibition featuring seven artists and projects from the early 1970s to 1996, all underrepresented in Japan up to that point, that deal with the ways an individual or an institution builds relationships with and survives in contemporary society; and William Kentridge—What We See & What We Know: Thinking About History While Walking, and Thus the Drawings Began to Move… (2009), one of the biggest solo exhibitions of the artist’s work and the first in Japan, which was awarded for its excellent curation.