Tadashi Kawamata was born in 1953 on the island of Hokkaido. He is internationally renowned for his monumental projects, often created using reclaimed materials and always in dialogue with the historical, social, and environmental context of the site that hosts them.
Graduating from the Tokyo University of the Arts, at just 28 years old he was invited to represent Japan at the 40th Venice Biennale, establishing himself on the international art scene at a very young age. The installation Venice ’82 he created for the Japanese Pavilion — a wooden structure enveloping the entire building — featured the architectural language that would go on to characterise his practice.
Working primarily in situ, the urban space is at the heart of most of the numerous multidisciplinary projects the artist has realised around the world. Conceived for the public realm, his installations create a dialogue with the social and collective context, inviting a new reflection on the places we inhabit. Whether applied to the façades of important historical buildings, newly regenerated urban areas, construction or demolition sites, or even abandoned or yet-to-be-developed spaces, his parasite-like interventions on existing architecture reconfigure our everyday environment. His unconventional structures made of wooden crates, pallets, cardboard, and discarded furnitures integrate harmoniously with the historical and social layers that make up the complexity of the urban fabric.
The artist has collaborated on large-scale projects around the world and has held solo exhibitions at prestigious institutions including MoMA PS1, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Serpentine Gallery in London, the Neue Galerie Staatlische, Kassel, and MAAT in Lisbon. He exhibited at the 40th Venice Biennale in 1982, Documenta VIII and Documenta IX, and the Busan Biennale in South Korea.
Kawamata has been a professor at the Tokyo National University of Arts (1998-2005) and at l’École Nationale Superiéure des beaux-arts, Paris (2007-2019).
Currently, he lives between Paris and Tokyo.
