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KEYNOTE LECTURE 2026: YUKO HASEGAWA
VISUAL THINKING: THE EVOLUTION OF YUKO HASEGAWA’S CURATORIAL PRACTICE
In this talk Yuko Hasegawa retraces her curatorial practice through the lens of visual thinking, examining how this concept illuminates the development of her work from the late 1990s to the present.
Throughout her career Hasegawa has made it a point of her curatorial practice not to rely solely on concepts or language but rather to create situations that enable audiences to think through their experiences of perception, the body, space, and the environment. She introduces the ideas and methodologies that have shaped this practice by revisiting her key exhibitions, beginning with the landmark show “De-Genderism: détruire dit-elle/il” (1997) at the Setagaya Art Museum, and continuing through the 7th International Istanbul Biennial (2001) and Sharjah Biennial 11 (2013) to her more recent engagements with ecology and the nonhuman.
By expanding on her recent thinking surrounding sensory communication and the economic theory of Social Common Capital, Hasegawa asks whether art can become a foundation for bridging cultures and disciplines as well as for fostering new relationships and dialogue—from the body to the environment, from the individual to collective, and from a humancentric worldview toward coexistence with diverse lifeforms. Touching on her collaborations with Japanese and international artists and her work with new generations of practitioners, she concludes by addressing the potential of crossdisciplinary curatorial practices to open up new ways of seeing the world.
Yuko Hasegawa
Yuko Hasegawa is a curator and art historian. She is currently a visiting professor teaching curatorial theory and practice at the Graduate School of Management, Kyoto University; the director of the art and design program at the International House of Japan, Tokyo; a visiting professor at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Kyoto; and professor emeritus at Tokyo University of the Arts. She was formerly the director of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa. Her honors and merits include Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France, 2024), the Commissioner for Cultural Affairs Award (Japan, 2020), the Ordem de Rio Branco (Brazil, 2017), and Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France, 2015).
Hasegawa has curated numerous biennale exhibitions, including those in Istanbul (2001), Shanghai (2002), São Paulo (2010), Sharjah (2013), Moscow (2017), and Thailand (2021), and international exhibitions including “Japanorama: A New Vision on Art Since 1970” at the Centre Pompidou-Metz (2017) and “Fukami: A Plunge into Japanese Aesthetics” at the Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild in Paris (2018). Most recently, she curated the Syrian Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale. She has authored numerous texts and edited numerous catalogues, including Art and the New Ecology: The Anthropocene as a “Dithering Time” (Ibunsha, 2022).
