CHANEL NEXUS HALL

The CHANEL Nexus Hall, which marks the 20th anniversary of its opening in 2024, has welcomed the director of the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art Philip Tinari as a new advisor, and has commenced work on new initiatives toward becoming a crucial platform for cross-cultural exchange, dialogue, and artistic collaboration.
Commencing on October 19 will be a new series of exhibitions in collaboration with the Hasegawa Lab, an incubator for the next generation of curatorial voices led by Yuko Hasegawa (Director of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Honorary Professor of Tokyo University of the Arts). This collaboration, which is also a challenge to find out what kind of perspectives art can offer to people in the present world, will employ early-career curators from the Hasegawa Lab and aim to produce dialogs among a range of talented individuals who will lead the way in the next generation. Encounters with the ideas for new formulas on display in this exhibition may serve as an opportunity for the people who view them to discover a new way of looking at things, new lifestyles, and new aesthetics.
The title of the exhibition will be Everyday Enchantment, and it will feature works from the three artists Bianca Bondi, Muku Kobayashi, and Umico Niwa, who are respectively based in France, Japan, and the US. Under the artistic direction of Yuko Hasegawa, the first edition of the series will be curated by Tetsumi Kayama and Finn Ryan of the Hasegawa Lab.

In our daily life today, where everything is informational and digitalised, the space for mystery and the unknown that can stir the imagination seems to narrow. Through this exhibition, the audience is invited to rediscover the magic hidden in the everyday. Microscopic lives of moss and crystal are given shape in Bondi’s mystic tapestries, Kobayashi reassembles ordinary objects as those that dance with vibrant spirit, and Niwa’s tender, fey creations intertwine with her personal story weaving a narrative of eco-feminism. They cohabit in a contemporary creation myth, with agency, distinctive character, and hopefulness. 
As we navigate through this space, we reencounter our ability to recognise the beauty of all, blurring the boundaries between human and non-human, organic and synthetic, offering a vision of a future where all beings harmoniously coexist in a transformative symbiosis. 

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

Yuko Hasegawa
Yuko Hasegawa is a curator, educator and writer based out of Tokyo. She currently holds positions as Director of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Professor Emeritus of Tokyo University of the Arts, Visiting Professor of Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Artistic Director of the Inujima Art House Project, and Program Director, Art and Design of the International House of Japan.
She was also Visiting Professor at the Department of Philosophy of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice in 2023, and the Artistic Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo until 2021 where she curated solo exhibitions of Dumb Type, Olafur Eliasson and rhizomatiks among others. She has curated Japanese contemporary art and media and technology extensively both domestically and internationally. Her curatorial language is interdisciplinary, encompassing not simply art but also architecture, design, science and anthropology, and combined with global curating experience, allows her to view art as part of a single, holistic ecology.
Hasegawa has also curated, either solo or in a joint capacity, international art biennials including the 7th International Istanbul Biennial (2001), the Shanghai Biennale (2002), the 29th São Paulo Biennial (2010), the Sharjah Biennial 11 (2013), and the 7th Moscow Biennale (2017), Thailand Biennale, Korat (2021) and also served as art advisor to the 12th Venice Architecture Biennale (2010). She received the medal as Officier des Arts et des Lettres in 2024.

CURATORS

Tetsumi Kayama
Tetsumi Kayama (b. 1997, Shanghai) is an artist and curator who graduated with honors in 2020 from the University of New South Wales. In 2024 he graduated with a Master of Philosophy in Arts Studies and Curatorial Practices from Tokyo University of the Arts. He conducts research focusing on the cultural authenticity in contemporary curation, criticism of Western art institutions in Post-Orientalism, and globalization with an emphasis on Asia. He has received the GOTYA award from the Design Institute of Australia.
His curated exhibitions include “CONCRETE: art design architecture” (Sydney, 2020), “Glitches in Love: A New Formula” (Tokyo, 2023), “Fixed Point Observations” (Tokyo, 2023), “Echolocating: Continuum of Time” (Tokyo, 2023), and “Touching and Being Touched” (Tokyo, 2024).

Finn Ryan
Finn Ryan (b. 1999, London) is a Tokyo-based curator and researcher with a particular interest in fashion, performance, ecology, queer and crip studies. In 2024 they graduated with a Master of Philosophy in Arts Studies and Curatorial Practices from Tokyo University of the Arts. Also studied at the University of Exeter and Kyoto University and hold a BA in Liberal Arts focusing on Literature and Film.
Ryan curated “what are you for a creature” (2023), and co-curated “Glitches in Love: A New Formula” (2023), “Kin From Afar as part of Stilllive Studies” (2023), “Touch My Mumblings”, “Hug My Words, Kiss My Singing” (2023), and “Crystal Clear” (2022).