Kato Tsubasa is an artist currently living and working in Tokyo. The common characteristic of Kato’s multimedia projects, including performance, structures and video, is communal practice: his representative Pull and Raise (moving a large structure with ropes in public space) relies on spontaneous participation. Since completing a project in Fukushima after the 2011 disaster, his work has become more satirical in nature, playing with social boundaries, such as They Do Not Understand Each Other on an uninhabited island between Korea and Japan. A community of refugees facing eviction pulls down a structure that resembles their homes in Break it Before it’s Broken. Four white males tied together to perform the US national anthem in Woodstock 2017. His projects and installations challenge the viewer to reconceive their sense of distances between us.
His works have been widely exhibited including Turf and Perimeter at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo (2021), Scratching the Surface at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2021), They Do Not Understand Each Other at Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2020), BECOMING A COLLECTIVE BODY at MAXXI, Rome (2020), Co/Inspiration in Catastrophes at MOCA Taipei, Taipei (2020), Aichi Triennale 2019 in Nagoya and Toyota city, Reenacting History at MMCA, Gwacheon (2017), Uprisings at Jeu de Paume, Paris (2016), among others.