Curatorial Tour – Red (EN)

Organised into thematic sections, Kaihō: Japanese Women Artists after 1945 explores the radical yet often overlooked contributions of Japanese women artists to the global artistic landscape from the post-war period to the turn of the twenty-first century. Drawing on the artists’ personal lives and creative resilience, the exhibition brings together works by Shōko Maemoto, Takako Saito, Yoshiko Shimada and Atsuko Tanaka, among many others – some of which have rarely, if ever, been shown outside of Japan. 

For this special tour, Research Associate Yurika Imaseki invites the audience to see the exhibition anew through a thematic perspective: the colour red. Recurring across many of the works on display, red invites a range of associations — from the Japanese flag to abstraction, from blood to the disruptive body. These resonances offer an alternative path through the exhibition, one that opens questions of nationalism, play and women's bodily experience.

Discover the exhibition through the lens of Research Associate Yurika Imaseki.  

Biography

Yurika Imaseki is a curator specialising in Japanese modern and contemporary art. She completed her MFA in Curating at Goldsmiths, University of London and has developed an interdisciplinary practice grounded in decolonial and queer feminist thought as a critical framework. Informed by these perspectives, her research as external advisor for 茶, चाय, Tea (Chá, Chai, Tea) (Horniman Museum and Gardens, London, 2023–24) explored tea cultures across transnational contexts and she carries this critical lens into her role as Research Associate for Kaihō: Japanese Women Artists after 1945. She recently completed the Mori Contemporary Art Foundation's Curator Residency Program (2026) and participated in Art Week Tokyo's Visiting Curator Programme (2025). She was a co-curator of the year-long programme Mapping Local Ecologies at Goldsmiths CCA and LVAN Relay!, organised in partnership with the Lewisham Visual Art Network. She previously served as Programming Officer (Exhibitions) at Japan House London (2023–24) and has guest-lectured at universities including Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.