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Emily Clarkson
Project: Takako Saitō: A View of the Artist’s Archive
Emily Clarkson is a PhD candidate in History of Art at The University of Edinburgh. Her doctoral project analyses the impact and legacy of Japanese born women artists working internationally since the 1960s. Specific focus of this research is the live art practice of Takako Saitō (1929-2025), through which Emily analyses her work and its intersection with pedagogy, social responsibility, and invisible labour. Her methods combine conventional art historical research with feminist theory and embodied learning. She recently curated a display of Saitō’s performance ephemera and related self-documentation at Edinburgh College of Art library and developed a series of complementary reenactment workshops based on these archival fragments. A creative-critical essay of Saitō’s life experience as an artist, titled ‘Enjoy your life, love Takako’, will be published in an upcoming companion to women and the avant-garde. Alongside her research Emily works as an archivist for Saitō’s archive, preparing the collection for public access in the form of a digital living archive. She holds an undergraduate MA in History of Art from the University of Edinburgh (Hons; 2018) and a postgraduate double MA in the History of Art of East Asia and Japanese from SOAS (2023). Between her undergraduate and postgraduate studies Emily worked full-time as a teacher and continues to facilitate arts related workshops for primary and secondary pupils.
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Olga Isaeva
Olga Isaeva is a PhD candidate in Art History at the University of Bonn (Germany). Her doctoral project is a microhistory of the Japanese avant-gardes movements of the Taishō period, with particular attention to the mobility and transcultural activities of artists staying in Japan at the time, such as Davyd Burliuk and Varvara Bubnova.
Olga holds a BA in Art History, Archaeology, and German Language and Literature Studies, as well as an MA in Art History, from the University of Bonn. In both of her degree theses, she focused on Japanese art, seeking to challenge the Eurocentric canon of art history and to decentralize prevailing concepts of modernity and the avant-gardes.
She conducted research stays at Waseda University in Tōkyō and at the University of Tsukuba as a doctoral fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Olga has been awarded a PhD scholarship by the Hans Böckler Foundation. Her publications have primarily examined pre-war avant-gardes movement in Japan and contact relations from a point of view of a transculturally framed art history.
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Luis Alberto Lopez Matus Villegas
Project: Encounters with Japan’s postwar avant-garde movement in Mexico
Visual artist; studied Philosophy (ULSA 2006) Cinematography (Indie Films 2003). His
projects span criticism, through experimental curatorial and artistic production, and he has worked in radio and film productions. He has been a member of the International Community of Scanner Artists since 2010 and has participated in various cultural events regarding the Mexico-Japan relationship. Academically, he has participated in congresses and forums such as the Third and Fourth International Gothic Congress (FFyL, UNAM, 2010-11) and the film cycle “La ciencia de los espectros” (MUAC, UNAM, 2011). His work has been exhibited in several cultural centers in Mexico City, Teotihuacan, San Cristobal de las Casas (Mexico), Prague (Czech Republic) and Moscow (Russia). He received his MA in Art History of the Autonomous University of Mexico, he was part of the research and curatorship of the exhibition “The Journey of Objects” review of the collection of popular international crafts donated to MUCA-UNAM by the Committee of the XIX Olympic Games in 1969, exhibited in the University Collections Room, Curatorial Laboratory of CCU Tlatelolco. In addition to participating with a piece in the exhibition “EXPANDING THE SPACES OF ART HELEN ESCOBEDO IN THE MUAC (1961-1979)”. Documentary exhibition of the Arkheia Documentation Center, in the Contemporary Art University Museum of the UNAM. PhD Candidate in Art History at the National Autonomous University of Mexico currently focuses his studies on the academic dynamics of Japanese artists in Mexico.
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Edisabel Marrero Tejeda
Edisabel Marrero Tejeda is a Cuban curator and art historian based in Mexico. She holds a Master’s degree in Asian and African Studies with a specialisation in Japanese art, and is currently a PhD candidate in Art History at UNAM (Mexico). Her research focuses on contemporary curatorial practices, transnational exhibitions, and the cultural politics of representation in Japan and South Korea. She has taught Cultural Theory and Art History at several universities in Mexico and has collaborated with institutions such as the Havana Biennial. In 2024, she was awarded the Ishibashi Foundation / The Japan Foundation Fellowship for Research on Japanese Art, and previously served as a Research Fellow at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA, South Korea) in 2014. Her current project, Staging Japan, Imagining Asia, expands upon her PhD research, titled How Does Asia Mean? Iterations of Asianity and Curatorial Operations of Japan and Korea at the Venice Biennale, by examining how Japan’s post-1990 curatorial discourses and exhibitionary strategies contribute to the shaping of regional imaginaries of Asia.
Joanes Rocha
Project: Rethinking the Jesuit Architectural Spaces through the Namban Folding Screens
Joanes Rocha (ホッシャ・ジョアネス, 喬耐斯) is a scholar of architectural history, holding BAs in both Architecture and History. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Tokyo (Japan). He was formerly a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica (Taipei), and at the National Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies, Fudan University (Shanghai). He is also an associate researcher at the Centre for Asian Studies at the University of Brasília (NEASIA–UnB). Rocha is the author of various works and articles on East Asia in the fields of social sciences and humanities, covering topics such as language, culture, history, architecture, Japanese studies, sinology, and art. His primary research focuses on the Iberian presence in East Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries, as well as the safeguarding of its cultural heritage.
Recent related events:
The Aesthetics of Wabi-suki in João Rodrigues (1561–1633) and his Contemporaries