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imaginista

Helena Čapková

Curatorial Researcher: Corresponding With

Helena Čapková (*1981) is a Tokyo-based curator, researcher, and art history professor at Waseda University, Tokyo. She studied transnational visual culture and Japanese studies in Prague and London. Already as a PhD candidate, she collaborated on international and interdisciplinary research projects such as Forgotten Japonisme (2007-2010) and later Enchanted Modernities: Theosophy, Modernism and the Arts, c.1875-1960 (2013-2015).

Since 2010, she has published and lectured extensively about the specific nature of Japanese modernism and avantgarde that she considers as an inherent part of art history, traditionally perceived as Western. Her publications on this topic include: Believe in socialism … - architect Bedřich Feuerstein and his perspective on modern Japan and architecture (2016) and „Careless Shell “– Transnational exploration of Czechoslovak and Japanese Surrealisme (2015).

For the past two years she has curated events together with the Czech Centre in Tokyo, ranging from exhibitions, talks and screenings. The discussion series about Czech-American architect Antonin Raymond, his way of working and reasons for his success in Japan is currently being prepared for a bilingual, Czech-Japanese publication – Antonin Raymond close-up, his post-war work and life in Japan, which is due in October 2018.

Her publications on the Bauhaus include: Transnational networkers – Iwao and Michiko Yamawaki and the formation of Japanese Modernist Design (Oxford Journal of Design History, 2014) and Bauhaus and tea ceremony: a study of mutual impact in design education between Germany and Japan in the interwar period (Eurasian Encounters; MUSEUMS, MISSIONS, MODERNITIES, Amsterdam University Press, 2017).

She publishes for academic audiences and general public in English, Chinese, Czech and Japanese.

Since 2017 Helena Čapková works as a curatorial researcher for bauhaus imaginista.