A major figure in Japanese contemporary art, Kohei Nawa reinvents sculpture by associating cultural tradition and new technologies. We sit down with the 44-year-old Osaka-born, Kyoto-based artist.
Describe your childhood in Osaka, your parents and when you knew you wanted to be an artist.
My father was an elementary school teacher who liked teaching crafts to children; my mother was a native Japanese language teacher, and there were a lot of picture books and artworks at home. Also, my grandmother made Japanese dolls, so the house was filled with abundant supplies of tools and materials. I feel that such an environment became a form of visual input. Making things from an early age was a part of playtime, and I was doing it on a daily basis.
Explain your creative process each time you take on a new art project. Which stage of the creation of an artwork do you spend the most time on and how do you come up with the themes for your artworks?
I feel the changes and moods of the present era in which I live, from which various images come to life. I draw inspiration from many trivial things, such as daily life and visiting various places, and have the ability to construct the image into shapes. It is also stimulating to see the latest technologies and traditional technologies. The most time-consuming part of my creative process is “feeling, looking, thinking”.
Why do you use contradictions in your work like the real and the virtual, the organic and the inorganic?
Because it is reality that there is a mix of contradictions, just like in modern society.
You work with materials and chemicals like silicone oil, polyurethane foam, glass beads and epoxy resin. How did you learn this?
I was originally interested in astronomy, physics and chemistry, and have been voluntarily learning and making a reflection of this in various ways.
Tell me about Throne, the sculpture combining traditional craftsmanship with new technology that you presented as the first Asian artist to exhibit under the Pyramid of the Louvre Museum after Western artists Claude Lévêque, Loris Gréaud, Tony Cragg and Wim Delvoye.
In our increasingly globalized world, diversity is an essential element in the transformation and growth of society. Single systems of absolute values and principles used to color the lives of large numbers of people under the rule of royalty or monarchy, but such coherence is now rare. However, the progress of computers and artificial intelligence is accelerating, and if they reach the stage where they boast absolute intelligence, society and whole nations are likely to blindly follow them. This work attempts to express that premonition as an immense “floating vacant throne”. If you think about what instances of power and authority have continued without interruption since ancient times, the pyramids provide one example, but we have to also ask what will continue into the future. Created with reference to the forms of festival floats and portable shrines that appear in the rituals and festivities of the East, the sculpture fuses today’s 3D modeling techniques with gold leaf techniques that date back to ancient Egypt. Throne is my answer to deciphering the contexts of the Louvre and its Pyramid. I especially focused on the gold leaf techniques of the Louvre, which also has its own restoration workshop. I imagined the flow of this technique that originated from Egypt and came back to France, after having crossed the Silk Road and reached Japan and developed independently.
In your work Force, the black rain you’ve created symbolizes the politics of fossil fuels and is a metaphor for radioactive fallout from manmade catastrophes, while Throne considers how computer technology and artificial intelligence could replace power and authority. Do you view yourself as a political artist?
When creating art, I want to make a universal work that encompasses not only contemporary society, but also ideas of the past, present and future. I’m not particularly conscious of whether I’m a political artist or not, and I would prefer to leave such judgment to the viewers themselves.
Tell me about your studio Sandwich that you established in 2009 and why you choose to be based in Kyoto.
Sandwich is an old sandwich factory near Uji River in Kyoto, which was renovated to become a creative platform of various disciplines. In addition to the studio, office and multidisciplinary spaces, there are kitchen and accommodation facilities where artists, designers, architects and dancers meet and collaborate on exciting projects. At the residency space, young creators from Japan and overseas stay and work on stimulating projects every day. Although I have been active in various places both in Japan and overseas, I feel that the flow of time and the cultural background of Kyoto most closely match my production style.
What do you hope to achieve through your art at the end of the day?
In my opinion, it is to present a new vision to society. I believe that it is my role to convey such a free vision and spectacle to society because artists can approach the strict rules, constraints and perspectives of society from a freer standpoint. It’s the advantage of artists to possess this freedom of vision.
