About the Curators
Sydney Tang
Sydney Tang is an art history and visual culture scholar based in the United States and Japan. Graduating from Sophia University's Faculty of Liberal Arts with a BA in History and Political Science, her research is focused upon the shaping of contemporary East Asian art by the region's political climate.
Upon the completion of her undergraduate degree, Tang worked at the contemporary art gallery, KOSAKU KANECHIKA, before returning to the United States to pursue further studies. Currently completing her MA in Art and Public Policy from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, her ongoing work expands upon her experience with East Asian politics and art.
Eimi Tagore-Erwin
As a second generation nikkei Japanese-American, Eimi has spent most of her life living between California, Osaka, Hawai’i. As a current PhD student in NYU’s East Asian Studies Program, she researches 21st century Japanese art and social movements, with a focus on post-disaster shifts, transpacific postcolonial legacies, social art practice and activism, art-related tourism, and state-led censorship. Eimi is a 2021 Fellow for the PoNJA Wikipedia Initiative sponsored by the Asia Art Archive in America (AAA-A) and PoNJA-GenKon. She was recently awarded the 2020 Seidensticker Prize by the School of Asian and Pacific Studies at the University of Hawai’i for her paper, “Japan at a Crossroads: Art Aesthetics and the Political,” and presented her research at the 2020 Critical Tourism Studies Asia Pacific Conference in Wakayama, Japan. In 2018, her article entitled “Contemporary Japanese Art: Between Globalization and Localization,” was published in the special Asia-focused issue of Arts and the Market. At NYU, she is currently leading the Graduate Student Guest Lecture Talk Series as the graduate student representative of the East Asian Studies Department.
Eimi received her MA in Visual Culture from Lund University in 2018, was a visiting scholar in the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa’s Asian Studies Program in 2018, and worked as a teacher through the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program from 2014-15 after receiving a BFA in Studio Art and Asian Studies from California Polytechnic State University in 2014. Eimi is also a collage artist, creating compositions that combine textures, patterns, and colors to explore affective resonances and generational memory. She has exhibited her work in San Francisco, Kyoto, Tokyo, and New York.
