Talk event to be held in commemoration of Sowamadu Ibrahim's first solo exhibition in Japan, "Farewell Savane

Join Hiroki Yamamoto, the author of History of Contemporary Art, Ai Koike, the navigator of YouTube channel Meet Your Art, and Kotaro Nukaga, the director of KOTARO NUKAGA, in our talk event “Diversity of Black Art and its Global Development”.

To commemorate the first solo-exhibition of Sowamadou Ibrahim in Japan, “Farewell Savane”, we will be holding a talk event with Hiroki Yamamoto, the author of History of Contemporary Art, Ai Koike, the navigator of the YouTube program “Meet Your Art”, and Kotaro Nukaga, the director of KOTARO NUKAGA. This will be held at KOTARO NUKAGA Roppongi. The event will also be broadcasted via Insta-Live, so you may join us through offline (limited number of participants) or online (Insta-Live). Starting from Soimadou Ibrahim’s solo exhibition “Farewell Savane”. This talk will focus on activities and art works by the black artists, the significant art scene today, with Yamamoto as the guest speaker and Koike as the MC to unravel the diversity and multilayered of these artists.

Since the 1980’s, there have been discussions and movements on how to rethink the complex issues of society by looking from a non-Western and transnational perspective on art and society, that has the backdrop of the post-colonial situation. This trend continues to develop dynamically in the art world, embracing various issues in expression and criticism, in contemporary society where racial, ethnic, religious issues, as well as historical and diverse values, such as gender minorities, are being reexamined under the banner of D&I (diversity and inclusion). Even today in the 21st century continues to stay, and this trend has brought an alternative perspective to the rise of populism and totalitarian political systems, for example by neoliberalism, and is attracting attention as an important discourse that links art and society.

We look forward to your participation in this event.

Date and time of the event

Date: Saturday, December 18, 2021

Time: 16:00 – 17:00 (Japan time)

Venue: KOTARO NUKAGA Roppongi

Address: Piramide Building 2F, 6-6-9 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo

Online Streaming: KOTARO NUKAGA official Instagram account below

Official Instagram account

Account URL: https://www.instagram.com/kotaro_nukaga/

Offline participation reservation site

Website URL: https://select-type.com/rsv/?id=GLedO6SjvJ8&c_id=204998

If you would like to watch the event online (Instagram Live Streaming), please contact us.

Participant Profile

Hiroki Yamamoto

Cultural researcher and artist. Born in Chiba in 1986, he graduated from Hitotsubashi University with a degree in sociology. He received his MA and PhD from University of the Arts London and was a postdoctoral researcher at the Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN) from 2013 to 2018. After working as a researcher at the Asian Culture Center in Gwangju, South Korea, and as a post-doctoral fellow at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, he has been an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Global Arts in Tokyo University of the Arts since 2020. Currently, he teaches at Department of Fine Arts in Kanazawa College of Art. He is also a part-time lecturer at Kyoto University of Arts and Osaka City University. He is the author of History of Contemporary Art: Europe, America, Japan, and the Transnational (Chuokoron Shinsha, 2019), Media and Culture in Transnational Asia: Divergence and Convergence (co-author, Rutgers University Press, 2020), and Considering Racism (co-author, Republica, 2021).

Ai Koike

Ai Koike graduated from the Faculty of Law at Keio University. After experiencing a start-up in her university years, she joined Hakuhodo Company in 2010. From 2012 to 2015, she was involved in buyout (LBO) investments, management of portfolio companies, and new business operations at Advantage Partners, a private-equity fund. In 2020, she founded GO FUND, a venture investment fund in Japan. Koike will be appointed as a full-time teacher at Kyoto University of Arts in 2021.

Born in 1980 in Kanagawa, Japan. After graduating from Waseda University with a degree in history, he received a master’s degree in art history at University College London. In 2008, he took over NUKAGA GALLERY and moved its gallery to Ginza in 2012. In 2018, he opened the contemporary art gallery KOTARO NUKAGA in Tennozu, Tokyo, and began working with artists from Japan and abroad. He has been introducing up-and-coming artists such as Tomokazu Matsuyama and Yuichi Hirako, as well as artists who have not yet been shown in Japan, such as Stephan Bruggemann and Tony Matelli. He has been thinking about the interaction between art and society, and its cross-disciplinarity to other cultures and academic fields.