Yuri Fukushima
In this tour, Yuri will be your volunteer tour guide for art and culture of the region. She is the founder and director of Yamakiwa Gallery in Kamiebiike Village from 2014. She has received training as an artist from Slade School of Fine Art at University College London. She has professional experience at Kodama Gallery in Tokyo and Echigo Tsumari Art Triennale as technical assistant. As the owner of Yamakiwa, she has built a close relation with community of the region and is very familiar with the Triennale. You will find no better guide except her!
She is also an avid explorer in different countries so to experience alternative lifestyles and even social structures and feed that back into her projects.
Outside work, she loves food. Though she would be a little shy to admit, she makes wonderful caramel apple jam, miso soup and Japanese curry!
Wai Yan Chung
Yan is the founder and director of Art Around ! from 2017. She is running the tour with Yuri.
She has been a passionate backpacker who has been to 20+ countries and is looking to visit many more. After quitting her banker’s life in London and Nairobi, as inspired by the Kenyan entrepreneurial spirit, she started touring around East Africa and taking footage and interivews of artists in the region. Then she decided to start Art Around ! so to introduce alternative traveling tracks and share her travel experience.
Yan is a yogi and enjoys figure drawing a lot. She finds amusement in memorizing positions and names of bones and muscles of human bodies.