SAPPORO.- The Sapporo International Art Festival Executive Committee is pleased to announce the appointment of the team of directors of the Sapporo International Art Festival 2020 (SIAF2020), which is scheduled for the 2020/2021 winter season.

Sapporo is the central city of Hokkaido, and Japan's fifth largest city with a population of approximately 1.96 million. The city has four distinct seasons with an annual snowfall of 6 meters in winter.

The Sapporo International Art Festival (SIAF) is an artistic event held in Sapporo, Japan once every three years, and SIAF2020 will be its third edition. Launched in 2014, this triennial event has previously been held from summer to autumn, but we have decided to hold SIAF2020 in winter to leverage more of the features and appeal of Sapporo—a city with snowy winters. Through SIAF2020, we will continue to promote local creativity through introducing contemporary art while publicizing what the city has to offer across Japan and elsewhere through works that feature not just snow and winter but that also touch upon themes such as culture in the northern region.

The past editions of SIAF were stewarded by a guest director, but we are replacing the single director system with a team of directors with particular areas of expertise: two Curatorial Directors, who will co-curate and manage SIAF programs, and a Communication Design Director, who will communicate the appeal of SIAF in an easily understandable way from a visitors’ point of view. For the post of the Communication Design Director, applications will be invited from members of the public at a later date.

The SIAF Executive Committee will announce the period, venues, theme and other details of SIAF2020 in the summer 2019.

Curatorial Director of Contemporary Art and Director in Chief
Taro Amano is Curator in Chief of the Yokohama Civic Art Gallery Azamino and a part-time lecturer at Tama Art University, the Joshibi University of Art and Design, Kokushikan University and Josai International University. He is a member of the International Association of Art Critics Japanese Section (AICA JAPAN). After working for the Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Amano was appointed curator of the Yokohama Museum of Art in 1987, when preparations for the museum’s opening were in full swing. In this role, he has been involved in planning numerous exhibitions, including many outside Japan. Amano served as the curator of the Yokohama Triennale 2005 and as the curatorial head of the 2011 and 2014 editions of the triennale. The major exhibitions he curated at the Yokohama Museum of Art and the Yokohama Civic Art Gallery Azamino include Japanese Art after 1945: Scream against the Sky (1994), Louise Bourgeois: Homesickness (1997), Yoshitomo Nara: I Don’t Mind, If You Forget Me. (2001), Non-Sect Radical: Contemporary Photography III (2004), Teppei Kaneuji: Melting City / Empty Forest (2009), Ryuichi Ishikawa: Once Thinking, Nothing before the Eyes. (2016), Takashi Arai: Bright was the Morning (2017) and Shingo Kanagawa: Long Time Span (2018).

Curatorial Director of Media Art
Agnieszka Kubicka-Dzieduszycka is a media art curator, project manager and academic teacher. After graduation in Austrian feminist literature at the Wrocław University, in 1994 she joined the organizers of Poland’s first media art festivals. Since then she’s been working on programming and production of 13 successive editions of the WRO Media Art Biennale, the major forum for media art in Poland and a key international event. Since launching the WRO Art Center (2008) she’s co-shaping the development of its program, runs international collaborations and is actively involved in art mediation. She’s curated and managed several EU-funded projects (new commissions, co-productions, touring exhibitions, digitization). Her latest curatorial contributions include Polish program at the AIB18 Biennale in Ii (Finland), exhibitions, workshops and screenings in Ukraine, Sweden, Japan, Germany, Israel. Her continuous work with Japanese media artists includes the reversible//irreversible//presence series of exhibitions and screenings by artists from Japan, presented at the WRO Art Center in 2016-2017.