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Adam Szymczyk × Doryun Chong
Tokyo Inside Out: New Readings of Japanese Art in a Global Context
How do exhibition makers approach issues of “placeness” in a globalized art world?
Home to a rich and complex art history, Japan has long offered curators fertile ground to work with. Yet exhibitions of Japanese modern and contemporary art often get caught up in trying to define the national characteristics of artistic practices that are necessarily implicated in transnational networks of empire, migration, and trade. What possibilities emerge from decoupling place from essentializations of the local, while still being attuned to local realities?
Looking ahead to this year’s edition of Art Week Tokyo, this talk brings together two internationally renowned curators who are currently working on exhibitions in Japan, Adam Szymczyk and Doryun Chong. They will discuss how their ambitious projects offer new ways of thinking about art today.
Adam Szymczyk
Adam Szymczyk is a curator, author, and editor based in Zurich. He is currently a curator at the Büro für geistige Mitarbeit at Kunsthaus Zürich. From 2014 to 2017 he was Artistic Director of documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel, and from 2003 to 2014 he was Director and Chief Curator of Kunsthalle Basel. In 2022 he founded Verein by Association, a nonprofit association for contemporary art and culture in Zurich.
Recent exhibition projects include “Tirana Patience” (cocurated with Nataša Ilić) at the National Gallery of Arts, Tirana (2019); “Yannis Tsarouchis: Dancing in Real Life” at Wrightwood 659, Chicago (2021); “Other Voices, Other Rooms” at the Criminal Investigation Department of the Zurich Municipal Police (2021); “Life, Without Buildings” at gta exhibitions, Zurich (2022); “Ahlam Shibli: Dissonant Belonging” (cocurated with Vassilis Oikonomopoulos) at Luma Arles (2023); and “Wilhelm Sasnal: Painting as Prop” at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2024).
Doryun Chong
Doryun Chong is Artistic Director and Chief Curator, M+, Hong Kong. Chong oversees all curatorial activities and programs at M+, including collections, exhibitions, learning and public programs, 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 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 and “Tetsumi Kudo: Garden of Metamorphosis” (2008) and “House of Oracles: A Huang Yong Ping Retrospective” (2005) at the Walker.
Andrew Maerkle
Andrew Maerkle is a writer, editor, and translator based in Tokyo. He is Editorial Director of Art Week Tokyo and, since 2010, Deputy Editor of the bilingual online platform ART iT | International Edition. From 2020 to 2021 he was Editorial Director of the Bunka-cho Art Platform Japan translation project. From 2006 to 2008 he was Deputy Editor of ArtAsiaPacific in New York, and one of the creators of the magazine’s annual Almanac edition. His book of translations Kishio Suga: Writings, vol. 1, 1969–1979, was published by Skira in 2021. Maerkle contributes to international publications including Aperture, Art & Australia, Artforum, and frieze. He is also active as an educator. From 2018 to 2023 he taught in the Graduate School of Global Arts at Tokyo University of the Arts, and from 2015 to 2018 he led the seminar and publishing project Discourse Lab for the alternative education program MAD (Making Art Different), run by Arts Initiative Tokyo.
