On Oomoto: A Conversation with Alexandra Munroe

Anton Vidokle and Koichiro Osaka

Onisaburō Deguchi, Yōwan (Scintillating Bowls)—Wakō (harmony and light) and more, 1944. raku pottery tea bowl. 6.9 × 11.4 × 11.5 cm. Collection and courtesy of Oomoto Foundation, Kyoto Kameoka. The 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale Séance: Technology of Spirit. Seoul Museum of Art, 2025. Photo: Hong Cheolki

Onisaburō Deguchi, *Yōwan (Scintillating Bowls)—Wakō (harmony and light)* and more, 1944. raku pottery tea bowl. 6.9 × 11.4 × 11.5 cm. Collection and courtesy of Oomoto Foundation, Kyoto Kameoka. The 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale *Séance: Technology of Spirit*. Seoul Museum of Art, 2025. Photo: Hong Cheolki

Alexandra Munroe, PhD, is an award-winning curator, Asia scholar, and author focusing on art, culture, and institutional global strategy. She is Senior Curator at Large, Global Arts at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, where she leads the Guggenheim’s Asian Art Initiative and serves as a senior founding curator of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Project. Munroe has worked on over forty exhibitions and is recognized for her pioneering scholarship on artists Cai Guo Qiang, Daido Moriyama, Yayoi Kusama, Lee Ufan, Mu Xin, and Yoko Ono, among others, and for bringing such historic avant-garde movements as Gutai, Mono-ha, Japanese otaku culture, and Chinese conceptual art to international attention. Munroe was lead curator of the Guggenheim’s exhibition “Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World” (2017), which Artnews named one of the top twenty-five most influential shows of the decade. Her exhibition “Yu Hong: Another One Bites the Dust” was named among the “Top 8 Hits” of the 2024 Venice Biennale by the New York Times.

Anton Vidokle is an artist, filmmaker, and the founder of e-flux. He has worked and exhibited in South Korea numerous times, including two editions of Gwangju Biennale, where he won the Noon Award in 2016, as well as a solo show at MMCA in 2019 and other exhibitions, lectures, and projects.

Koichiro Osaka is a curator, writer, and producer based in Tokyo. He is the founding director of Asakusa, a forty-square-meter exhibition space in Tokyo committed to advancing curatorial collaboration and practices.

Research Title

On Oomoto: A Conversation with Alexandra Munroe
Participants

Anton Vidokle and Koichiro Osaka
Publishing Date

2025-09-11
Languages

Korean
Editions

SMB13
Categories

Interview
Keywords

séance death

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Research Title On Oomoto: A Conversation with Alexandra Munroe

Category Interview

Edition The 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale

Authors Anton Vidokle and Koichiro Osaka

The English version of this essay can be found in e-flux journal #156, a special issue for the 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale Séance: Technology of the Spirit.

Link: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/156/6776743/on-oomoto-a-conversation-with-alexandra-munroe

It will also be available on this SMB website from mid-October.

This essay is originally commissioned for the 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale Catalogue, Séance: Technology of the Spirit (Seoul: Seoul Museum of Art, Mediabus, 2025), scheduled for publication on October, 2025. With the author’s consent, it is being published in advance on the Seoul Mediacity Biennale website and e-flux Journal. No part of this essay may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author, Seoul Museum of Art and Mediabus, Seoul.