Taro Amano and Agnieszka Kubicka-Dzieduszycka curatorial directors for Sapporo International Art Festival 2020. (SIAF2020). Photos: Shingo Kanagawa and Zbigniew Kupisz

ART NEWS: Taro Amano and Agnieszka Kubicka-Dzieduszycka will serve as Curatorial Directors of the Sapporo International Art Festival 2020 (SIAF2020).

BY ARTCENTRON

JAPAN- Taro Amano and Agnieszka Kubicka-Dzieduszycka have been appointed Curatorial Directors of the Sapporo International Art Festival 2020 (SIAF2020) scheduled for the 2020/2021 winter season. Taro Amano will serve as Curatorial Director of Contemporary Art and Director in Chief while Agnieszka Kubicka-Dzieduszycka is Curatorial Director of Media Art. The two will join others to ensure an outstanding outing.

Taro Amano: Curatorial Director of Contemporary Art and Director in Chief .

Presently, Taro Amano is Curator in Chief at the Yokohama Civic Art Gallery Azamino. In addition to his curatorial work, he has also been lecturing at different universities.  He is a part-time lecturer at Tama Art University, the Joshibi University of Art and Design. He also lectures at Kokushikan University and Josai International University. An art critic and writer, Amano is a member of the International Association of Art Critics Japanese Section (AICA JAPAN).

Previously, Amano was the curator of the Yokohama Museum of Art. He got this position in 1987 after working for the Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art.  In his role as curator of the Yokohama Museum of Art, Amano was involved in planning numerous exhibitions, including many outside of Japan. He served as the curator of the Yokohama Triennale 2005 and was the curatorial head of the 2011 and 2014 editions of the Triennale.

Over the years, Amano has curated some important exhibitions at the Yokohama Museum of Art and the Yokohama Civic Art Gallery Azamino. They include Japanese Art after 1945: Scream against the Sky (1994), Louise Bourgeois: Homesickness (1997), Yoshitomo Nara: I Don’t Mind, If You Forget Me (2001), and Non-Sect Radical: Contemporary Photography III (2004). Others include Teppei Kaneuji: Melting City / Empty Forest (2009), Ryuichi Ishikawa: Once Thinking, Nothing before the Eyes. (2016), Takashi Arai: Bright was the Morning (2017), and Shingo Kanagawa: Long TimeSpan (2018).

Agnieszka Kubicka-Dzieduszycka:

Curatorial Director of Media Art Sapporo. International Art Festival 2020

Agnieszka Kubicka-Dzieduszycka has a long history in the media art.  Presently, she is a media art curator, project manager, and academic teacher. Kubicka-Dzieduszycka’s career media art began after graduation in Austrian feminist literature at the Wrocław University.

In 1994, Kubicka-Dzieduszycka joined the organizers of Poland’s first media art festivals and has since continued to foster a career in the area of media art. Through the years, she has been working on programming and production of 13 successive editions of the WRO Media Art Biennale, the major forum for media art in Poland and a key international event.

In 2008, Kubicka-Dzieduszycka launched the WRO Art Center with a focus at bringing greater attention to media art.   There, she’s co-shaping the development of its program, runs international collaborations and is actively involved in art mediation.

Kubicka-Dzieduszycka has curated and managed several EU-funded projects (new commissions, co-productions, touring exhibitions, and digitization). Her latest curatorial contributions include Polish program at the AIB18 Biennale in Ii (Finland). She has also organized exhibitions, workshops, and screenings in Ukraine, Sweden, Japan, Germany, and Israel.

Her continuous work with Japanese media artists includes the reversible//irreversible//presence series of exhibitions and screenings by artists from Japan, presented at the WRO Art Center in 2016-2017.

The appointment of Taro Amano and Agnieszka Kubicka-Dzieduszycka will bring fresh ideas to the Sapporo International Art Festival 2020 that is in its third edition.

The Sapporo International Art Festival (SIAF) was launched in 2014. Held once every three years, this triennial event has gone through several transformations since it began. Previously held from summer to autumn, the organizers have decided to hold the SIAF2020 in winter. The change will leverage more of the features and appeal of Sapporo—a city with snowy winters.

Located in the central city of Hokkaido, Sapporo is Japan’s fifth largest city with a population of approximately 1.96 million. The city has four distinct seasons with an annual snowfall of 6 meters in winter. The snow season attracts many people, including tourists, from across the globe. Organizers of the Sapporo International Art Festival 2020 hope to build on this to attract more art lovers.

Even as the focus for the SIAF2020 shifts from summer to winter, the event will continue to promote local creativity by introducing contemporary art featuring snow and winter. Additionally, organizers will be publicizing what Sapporo has to offer. Across Japan and elsewhere works that feature themes such as culture in the northern region will be on display.

Read more from Arcentron Art News. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.