The collaboration with Art Basel celebrates the city’s artistic offerings and introduces international ones to watch; here’s what to look out for
Art Week Tokyo (AWT), in collaboration with Art Basel, which first ran in 2021, opens today and runs until November 6. The event is billed as an unprecedented initiative, bringing together more than 50 of the city’s museums, galleries and art spaces. Showcasing the breadth of the city’s artistic offerings, AWT is a bid to connect the local art scene with the international art world.
“We envision Art Week Tokyo as a platform for emerging galleries to gain exposure, and to make the next step towards participating in the international art community,” says Atsuko Ninagawa, co-founder and director of Art Week Tokyo, as well as founder of the Tokyo-based Take Ninagawa Gallery. She further notes the lack of the art events in the city compared to the full and varied cultural calendar throughout the rest of the nation: “While Japan has a rich calendar of art events that attract visitors to the country throughout the year, Tokyo itself has not had a regular event in recent decades that has been able to take advantage of the convening power of the city and all it has to offer.”
Museum highlights during the event include large-scale retrospective exhibitions of celebrated Korean artist Lee Ufan at the National Art Center and multimedia artist Shinro Ohtake at The National Museum of Modern Art.
Galleries, meanwhile, are showing a mix of established, contemporary and experimental Japanese artists, including solo exhibitions of photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto at Gallery Koyanagi, critic-artist Kenjiro Okazaki at Blum & Poe, Gozo Yoshimasu at Take Ninagawa. Media art pioneer Ryoji Ikeda’s work will be on view at Taro Nasu Gallery, while Yuko Mohri’s organic-sonic installations will take centre stage at Yutaka Kikutake Gallery.
Among the female Japanese painters being specifically recognised are veteran Mitsuko Miwa at SCAI the Bathhouse and Emi Otaguro at Kayokoyuki.
