Symposium: "Prism of the Real, 1989-2010: Tracing Its Spectrum in Curatorial Practices and Art Criticism Today"

Born in Tokyo in 1986. Cho worked as a curator at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum from 2016 to 2025. She specializes in modern and contemporary Asian art and has a particular interest in artistic expressions by minority individuals or communities in Asia. In recent years, she has been conducting research on artistic expressions of the “diaspora” - referring to immigrants and migrants and so forth. She has been serving as the Curatorial Advisor (contemporary art) for the Aichi Triennale 2025 since 2023.

The exhibitions Cho has curated to date at the Mori Art Museum and Fukuoka Asian Art Museum include:
MAM Collection 020: The World Lies in Our Narratives - Shitamichi Motoyuki, Vandy Rattana, Zhang O and Cao Fei (2025); Asian Photo History (2024); Waters in Asian Art (2023): Message—50 Years of Women Artists in Asia (2020); Fukuoka Asian Art Museum 20th Anniversary Exhibition: Journey through Asian Art (2019) and LGBTQ and Social Diversity in Asian Art (2019).

Azusa HASHIMOTO received her M.A. from the Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies at Kyoto University. Since 2008, she has been working as a curator at the National Museum of Art, Osaka (NMAO).  Her interest lies in creativity that emerges from the friction between global art history and local art practices.

In recent years, she curated a solo exhibition of THE PLAY (1967-) (“THE PLAY since 1967: beyond unknown currents”, 2016, NMAO), a legendary artist collective based in the Kansai region that has been active for over 50 years since the postwar period. Also she curated a retrospective exhibition of Shigeko Kubota (1937-2015) (“Viva Video! The Art and Life of Shigeko Kubota”, 2021, NMAO, co-curated with Mayumi Hamada, Mihoko Nishikawa, Midori Yoshimoto, traveled to The Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art and Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo), a pioneering female artist who moved from Japan to the United States and became a trailblazer in video installation.

At the same time, she has been actively involved in researching and curating cutting-edge contemporary art. This year, she curated the group exhibition “Prolonged Emergencies” at NMAO, centered on the present age in which states of emergency have become the norm. Other curatorial projects: “Roppongi Crossing 2022: Coming & Going”, co-curated with Taro Amano, Lena Fritch, Kenichi Kondo (Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2022-2023), “Travelers: Stepping into the Unknown”, co-curated with Yuka Uematsu, Sumi Hayashi (NMAO, 2018).

Hiroki Yamamoto, born in Chiba in 1986, is Cultural Studies Scholar and Associate Professor at Jissen Women’s University. Yamamoto graduated in Social Science at Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo in 2010 and completed his MA in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Arts (UAL), London in 2013. In 2018, he received a PhD from the University of the Arts London. After working at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the School of Design as a postdoctoral fellow and at Tokyo University of the Arts as Assistant Professor, he was Lecturer at Kanazawa College of Art until 2023. His single-authored publications are The History of Contemporary Art: Euro-America, Japan, and Transnational (Chuokoron-Shinsha, 2019), Art of the Post-Anthropocene (Bijutsu Shuppan-Sha, 2022), and Introduction to Contemporary Art (Bijutsu Shuppan-Sha, 2025). He co-edited De-Imperializing “Japanese Art History”: Art and Legacies of Empire in Modern and Contemporary Japan (co-edited with Nodoka Odawara, Getsuyosha, 2023) and translated Art and Engagement in Early Postwar Japan (Justin Jesty, Cornell University Press, 2018) into Japanese (Suiseisha, 2025). He curated the Japan Pavillion at the 15th Gwangju Biennale.

Doryun Chong is the Artistic Director and Chief Curator, M+, Hong Kong. Chong oversees all curatorial activities and programmes at M+, including collections, exhibitions, learning and public programmes, publications, and digital initiatives across the museum’s three main disciplinary areas of design and architecture, moving image, and visual art.

He has curated and overseen critically acclaimed exhibitions for M+, including Noguchi for Danh Vo: Counterpoint (2018), Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now (2022, with Mika Yoshitake), and Picasso for Asia—A Conversation (2025, with François Dareau). He has also helped organize and supervise the five editions of Hong Kong’s participation in the Venice Biennale from 2015 to 2024.

Prior to joining M+, Chong worked at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. He curated several landmark exhibitions during that time, including Tokyo 1955–1970: A New Avant-Garde (2012) at MoMA, Tetsumi Kudo: Garden of Metamorphosis (2008) and House of Oracles: A Huang Yong Ping Retrospective (2005) at the Walker Art Center.

Isabella Tam is Curator of Visual Art at M+. She is an expert on contemporary art in Asia with a focus on the parallel developments and exchanges among Chinese art, Japanese art, and the global contemporary discourse of photography. She was part of the inaugural team that contributed to the building of M+’s premier collection of Asian contemporary art and the institution’s opening displays. She has curated and organised exhibitions including Right Is Wrong: Four Decades of Chinese Art from the M+ Sigg Collection (Bildmuseet, Umeå, Sweden, 2014; Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, 2015) and M+ Sigg Collection: From Revolution to Globalisation (2021–2023), Sigg Prize 2023, Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now (2022), Yasumasa Morimura and Cindy Sherman: Masquerades (2024) at M+. She co-curated Prism of the Real: Making Art in Japan 1989—2010, a collaboration between M+ and the National Art Center, Tokyo (2025). In addition to serving on the juries of international photography awards, Tam was the inaugural curatorial resident at Tokyo Arts and Space in 2023 and a curatorial fellow at Whitechapel Gallery, London, in 2011. She earned her MA in Art History and Theory with an emphasis on Surrealism at the University of Essex.

Curator at the National Art Center, Tokyo.
Before joining the National Art Center, Tokyo, Yun worked at the National Museum of Art, Osaka (2015–2019) and the Ashiya City Museum of Art & History (2020–2021). She co-curated Prism of the Real: Making Art in Japan 1989–2010, a collaboration between M+ and the National Art Center, Tokyo (2025).
She previously curated Universal / Remote (2023–24, Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto; National Art Center, Tokyo; Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art) and served as assistant curator for Lee Ufan: 15th Anniversary of the National Art Center, Tokyo (2022, National Art Center, Tokyo), Ashiya Time: A Large Collection Exhibition (2020, Ashiya City Museum of Art & History), Christian Boltanski – Lifetime (2019, National Museum of Art, Osaka).