Backstage Conversations

In celebration of the opening of the fall gallery exhibition Bunraku Backstage (October 4, 2024—January 19, 2025), art historian Dr. Reiko Tomii will facilitate a conversation with contemporary artist Yuichiro Tamura and puppeteer and theater artist Basil Twist. The two artists, whose works appear in the exhibition, will discuss their engagement with bunraku theater and the importance of collaboration in their creativity. The three speakers will reflect upon the ‘operations’ at work behind the scenes of their practices. 

Speakers

Dr. Reiko Tomii is an independent art historian, who investigates post-1945 Japanese art in global and local contexts. Her research encompasses “international contemporaneity,” collectivism, and conceptualism in 1960s art, as demonstrated by her contribution to Global Conceptualism (Queens Museum of Art, 1999), Century City (Tate Modern, 2001), and Art, Anti-Art, Non-Art (Getty Research Institute, 2007). She has worked closely with numerous artists including Yayoi Kusama, Cai Guo-Qiang, and Ushio Shinohara. She is co-director of PoNJA-GenKon (www.ponja-genkon.net), a listserv group (est. 2003) of specialists interested in contemporary Japanese art. With PoNJA-GenKon, she has organized a number of symposiums and panels in collaboration with Yale University, Getty Research Institute, UCLA, Guggenheim Museum, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Asia Society Museum, University of Southern California, Japan Society, and NYU. Her book, Radicalism in the Wilderness: International Contemporaneity and 1960s Art in Japan, was published by MIT Press in Spring 2016. In 2019, she served as guest curator for a Japan Society Gallery exhibition based on her book: Radicalism in the Wilderness: Japanese Artists in the Global 1960s.

Yuichiro Tamura was born in 1977 in Toyama, Japan, and lives and works in Kyoto. Tamura’s work unfolds from existing images and objects, and reflects an interdisciplinary approach to various media including photography, video, installation, performance and theater. He creates multilayered narratives, containing a mixture of fact and fiction, based on a wide range of sources from indigenous historical themes to well-known popular subjects. New interpretations and readings are bestowed upon original histories and memories, thereby transcending spaces and time, and questioning what it means to be “contemporary.” The majority of his works are commissioned, and museum collections are also treated as subject matter in recent years. His recent exhibitions have included the solo shows ATM (Art Tower Mito, Ibaraki, 2024), Milky Mountain (Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Zealand, 2019), Hell Scream (Kyoto City University of Arts Art Gallery @KCUA, Kyoto, 2018), and the group shows Wunderkammer to Come: From the Uncompleted, a Beginning (Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, 2024), WORLD CLASSROOM (Mori Art Museum, 2023), Aichi Triennale 2022, Yokohama Triennale 2020, Asian Art Biennial (National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, 2019), Image Narratives: Literature in Japan (National Art Center, Tokyo, 2019), and Busan Biennale 2018.

Basil Twist (Creator & Director/Puppeteer), from San Francisco, is a third-generation puppeteer. He is the sole American to have graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts de la Marionnette (ESNAM) in Charleville-Mézières, France,  Shows include Symphonie Fantastique  Petrushka, Rite of Spring, Hansel & Gretel, Arias with a Twist La Bella Dormente nel Bosco, Sisters Follies, A Streetcar Named Desire (La Comédie Française, also co-director), TITON et l’AURORE ( with Les Arts Florissant at The Opera Comique and Theatre Royal de Versailles), The Book of Mountains and Seas by composer Huang Ruo and Twist as designer/director.  He is currently serving as the puppetry designer and director of My Neighbour Totoro which returns to the West End in 2025. In film he contributed to the magic of Alfonso Cuarón’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, creating the Dementors.  His past honors have included an Obie, Henry Hewes, Doris Duke Performing Artist, Creative Capital Award, Asian Arts Council, multiple UNIMA and Bessie Awards, a Guggenheim fellowship, a MacArthur Fellowship, and Rome Prize. He is currently in residence at Dartmouth as the Roth Family Visiting Scholar. Since 1999 he has served as Artistic Director of Dream Music Puppetry at HERE in New York City.

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Yuichiro Tamura, Invisible Hands, 2022. 3-channel video, sound, inkjet print, ceramic, and shop curtain. Collection of Mori Art Museum, Tokyo. Photo: Furukawa Yuya

Bunraku Backstage is generously supported by Takenaka Corporation.

Product support for Bunraku Backstage is generously provided by Sony Corporation of America.

Japan Society programs are supported by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Exhibitions and Arts & Culture Lecture Programs are made possible, in part, by Sompo Holdings, Inc.; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Endowment Fund; the Mary Griggs Burke Endowment Fund established by the Mary Livingston Griggs and Mary Griggs Burke Foundation; The Masako Mera and Koichi Mera, PhD Fund for Education and the Arts; Peggy and Dick Danziger; Jun Makihara and Megumi Oka; Barbara Bertozzi Castelli; and Gallery Circle members. Support for Arts & Culture Lecture Programs is provided, in part, by the Sandy Heck Lecture Fund.

Transportation assistance is provided by Japan Airlines, the official Japanese airline sponsor for Japan Society gallery exhibitions.