On Yoshitomo Nara:
 Yeewan Koon and Mika Yoshitake in Dialogue 

Saturday, February 22, 2pm
 BLUM Los Angeles   In celebration of My Imperfect Self, Yoshitomo Nara's latest exhibition in Los Angeles, BLUM is pleased to present a conversation with exhibition curator Yeewan Koon and curator Mika Yoshitake. My Imperfect Self marks thirty years since the artist's first US exhibition, titled Pacific Babies, at Blum & Poe in 1995. This event is free and open to all. RSVP is encouraged. Please note this event will be filmed; by attending, participants and visitors consent to video and audio recording and its publication and reproduction. Limited parking available. Rideshare highly encouraged. This exhibition highlights Yoshitomo Nara’s evolving sculptural practice, featuring eleven mid-size heads exuding a quirky strangeness and dark charm that defines the artist’s work. These heads, presented for the first time, are integral to Nara’s exploration in clay, intertwining ideas and techniques developed since 2011, but also express a poignant return to his roots. The exhibition also includes paintings and drawings that resonate with the sculptures, inviting deeper reflection on his ongoing experimentation throughout a career that gained international acclaim with his seminal work, The Girl with the Knife in Her Hand (1991). About Yeewan Koon Yeewan Koon is Associate Dean (Global) and Chair of the Department of Art History at the University of Hong Kong where she teaches courses in Asian art history. She has published numerous writings on both traditional and contemporary art, including the definitive monograph on Yoshitomo Nara, made in close collaboration with the artist and published by Phaidon in 2020. She has also curated exhibitions including Faultlines at the Gwangju Biennale (2018), and It Begins with Metamorphosis: Xu Bing at Asia Society, Hong Kong (2014). She is the recipient of several research awards including a Fulbright Senior Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies scholarship in Humanities, and completed scholarships as visiting professor at Cambridge University, UK, and Columbia University, NY. About Mika Yoshitake Mika Yoshitake is a scholar and curator who earned her PhD from UCLA in Art History with expertise in postwar Japanese art. Her most recent curatorial project is Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice (2024), co-curated with Glenn Kaino, at the Hammer Museum as part of the Getty’s PST ART: Art & Science Collide. At BLUM, she has curated the AICA-USA award-winning exhibition Requiem for the Sun: The Art of Mono-ha (2012), Parergon: Japanese Art of the 1980s and 1990s (2019), and Thirty Years: Written with a Splash of Blood (2024). She has also curated museum retrospectives on Yayoi Kusama (M+ Hong Kong, Guggenheim Bilbao and Serralves Museum), Yoshitomo Nara (LACMA), and Lee Ufan (Guggenheim New York). She was previously Curator at the Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (2011–2018), where she curated the six-venue North American tour of Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors.