The winner of Ars Fennica 2025 will be selected from the nominated candidates by Mami Kataoka, director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo and the director of the National Center for Art Research (NCAR) in Japan. The expert will visit Helsinki in October 2025. The prize winner will be announced in the spring of 2026.
Kataoka was appointed as the director of the Mori Art Museum in 2020. Prior to that, she worked as a curator at Mori starting in 2003. Kataoka has been the Chief Curator at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery (1997–2002).
Beyond Japan, Kataoka has held positions at the Hayward Gallery in London from 2007 to 2009 as International Curator; she has also acted as Co-Artistic Director for the 9th Gwangju Biennale (2012), Artistic Director for the 21st Biennale of Sydney (2018) and Artistic Director for the Aichi Triennale 2022. Kataoka served as a Board Member (2014–2022) and the President (2020–2022) of CIMAM (International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art).
At Mori Art Museum, Kataoka has curated a number of mid-career survey shows of Asian artist including Tsuyoshi Ozawa (2004), Ai Weiwei (2009), Lee Bul (2012), Makoto Aida (2012), Lee Mingwei (2014) , NS Harsha (2017) and Chiharu Shiota (2019) while co-curated regional shows including SUNSHOWER : Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now (2017) and Roppongi Crossing: Contemporary Japanese Art in 2004 and 2013. Kataoka frequently writes, lectures, and juries on contemporary art from Japan, Asia and beyond.
Photo: Ito Akinori.
