Kris KURAMITSU

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Kris KURAMITSU

Participating Project	Exchange Residency Program (Creators from abroad)
Activity Based	Los Angeles
City / Place stayed	Tokyo
Period	2024.10 - 2024.11

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*Kris Kuramitsu’s residency was made possible by an artist residency partnership with 18th Street Arts Center through the Call to Dream: The Sam Francis Fellowship and TOKAS.

Purpose of the residency

I am keen to visit many artist's studios and cultural spaces during my time in Tokyo, with a particular interest in artist collectives and socially engaged artists working in the public sphere.

Plan during the residency

• Conducting studio visits
• Meeting curators and connecting with cultural institutions and community organizations in Japan
• Researching site specific art projects and programs in Japan
  

Activities during the residency

This residency was a precious opportunity to pursue several different areas of interest in my curatorial practice. Most notably, I was able to prioritize the very things that so often get pushed to the side in my daily professional life – looking at art and connecting with artists and curators. This time served as an invaluable introduction to a vibrant ecosystem of art and artists in Tokyo and beyond. I found especially meaningful connections to artists making site- and community-responsive work; artists who engage with complex histories around the military and political history of the early-mid 20th Century; and artists invested in sparking social change through their work, as individuals or as members of collectives. I was also able to conduct research related to Isamu Noguchi and Saburo Hasegawa -- in Hiroshima; at the National Museum of Art, Osaka; and at the Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto – as I work toward a forthcoming group exhibition that I am co-curating at MOCA Los Angeles in September 2026.

Outcome of the residency

I was able to engage with so many incredible artists and collectives during my brief stay in Tokyo, with whom I found meaningful parallels in approach and concern to artists that I have worked with in the US. Stemming from my previous research on Asian American activist collectives, I sought out artists working collectively and individually toward the goals of social change; this work takes many different forms, some more overt than others, but I connected with many artists directly questioning structures of power through their work in very meaningful ways. I also visited a number of site-specific art festivals or art destinations, including projects as varied as the “Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial,” Benesse Art Site Naoshima, “BENTEN 2024 Art Night Kabukicho,” and “Sense Island/Land” in Yokosuka/Sarushima. As the curator of the “Candlewood Arts Festival,” a community-facing temporary public art festival in the rural desert town of Borrego Springs, California, I was so moved by the deep engagement of many of the artists with the communities and places that they work. I was also very pleased to enhance my research on an exhibition that I am co-organizing about a generation of Japanese American artists whose lives and work were impacted by World War II incarceration for the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles. The work and relationship of Isamu Noguchi and Saburo Hasegawa will be an important story for our exhibition. While in Japan, I was able to visit Hiroshima and Noguchi’s Peace Bridge, conduct additional research about interaction between Japanese and US artists at mid-century, and view several works by Hasegawa in museum collections in Osaka and Kyoto.

Creator Information