Tadashi Kawamata Japan, b. 1953

Tadashi Kawamata was born in Hokkaido, Japan in 1953. He graduated from the Tokyo University of the Arts in 1979 and participated in the 1982 Venice Biennale at 28. Since then, he has participated in Kassel Documenta in 1987 and 1992, and the Sao Paulo Biennale in 1987. In 1997, he shocked the European art world with his installation "Away of Chairs," which piled up chairs at Chapellle Saint-Louis de la Salpetriere. He is one of the most high-profile artists in Europe, with solo exhibitions at the Tokyo Museum of Modern Art in 2008, Centre Pompidou in 2010, and Centre Pompidou-Metz in 2016, where he worked as a professor at the École de Beaux-Arts in Paris.

Tadashi Kawamata was known for installation works that built structures by stacking discarded items. He finds the material that symbolizes the area where the work is installed and proceeds with the work. For example, in 2010, he saw wooden fish boxes piled up at the Jagalchi Market in Busan and collected about 3,000 fish boxes before the exhibition. He used the fish boxes as materials for his exhibition in Busan. Then, he used an apple box that symbolizes Daegu for the exhibition at the Daegu Museum of Art,

Most of the materials he uses are wood. This is because trees are everywhere, along with the history of the place, and are economical. It is also an easy material for participants seeking on-site to collaborate. Since the artist values locality, he seeks participants to work on the installation in the field. This cooperation has the meaning of communication as a physical and conscious participation.

Nest and Tree Hut appeared in his work in 1998 and has been shown several times at the exhibition in Bonn in Germany and the Pompidou Center in France. The nests and tree huts, which hang mainly on the rooftops of buildings, outer walls, and inside the exhibition hall, are natural and organic, disturbing urban spaces and creating unfamiliar landscapes. Tadashi Kawamata said the reason for the construction of the nest and the cottage is that it is fun to see in the city, and it is an uninhabitable space, but it is fun to imagine what kind of life will live on the roof of the building or the outer wall of the building.