Yuko Hasegawa, chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, has been named the curator for the 7th Moscow Biennale, which will be held from 15 September to 28 October 2017.

Titled “Transcendental Forest,” the biennial will focus on the concept of the forest as a metaphor for people seeking to plant roots in new places. Clouds above the forest will represent the Internet, a forum for communication. “It is between the forest and the cloud that new meanings and masterpieces are created,” Hasegawa said in a statement.

After graduating from Kyoto University with a major in law and Tokyo University of the Arts graduate school, she worked at Art Tower Mito, Setagaya Art Museum, and trained at the Whitney Museum of American Art before helping to found the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa starting in 1999 and directed its architecture and collections.

Hasegawa curated the Seventh Istanbul Biennial in 2001 and, more recently, the Eleventh Sharjah Biennale in 2013. She cocurated the Fifth Shanghai Biennale in 2002, the Fourth Seoul International Biennale of Media Art in 2006, and the Twenty-Ninth Biennale in Sāo Paulo in 2010, and served as artistic advisor of the Twelfth Venice Architecture Biennale in 2010. In 2003, she was commissioner of Japan’s pavilion for the Fiftieth Venice Biennale.