Researcher Profile:
Yang Chen is a third-year PhD researcher in Museum Studies at the School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester, UK. Her research aims to develop a theoretical framework to understand the relationship between the postwar Japanese art collective Jikken Kōbō (JK) and the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum (TMAM). The conceptual framework is developed basing on the Japanese Jungian psychologist Hayao Kawai's Centre-Empty Structure (or the hollow) and the Deleuzian de/reterritorialisation. The developed framework will be used to analyse JK's experimental presentation and the non-collecting state of TMAM. It is intended that the research findings will propose a new way of approaching Japanese avant-garde's experimental exhibitions and the Japanese art/museum/exhibition systems.

Residency Plan:
Yang will visit several libraries, archives and museums around Japan. In Tokyo, she will be visiting the National Diet Library and the National Archives of Japan. Their collections of museum and exposition systems in the 19th century will provide visual and contextual aid for forming a stronger argument in her writing. Furthermore, several museums in Japan directly relate to or had held exhibitions about the avant-garde collectives that she is researching, such as the Taro Okamoto Museum of Art in Kawasaki and the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama in Hayama. The archives that the museums are preserving will help her to reconstruct historical narratives about how artists interacted with museums and expositions, and enable her to test the developed theoretical framework.

Date	2019.10.01 - 2019.11.30
Place	Residence-3