Koki Tanaka to Represent Japan at the 2013 Venice Biennale

The Japan Foundation have announced that the media artist Koki Tanaka will represent Japan at the 2013 Venice Biennale. The commissioner of the Japan Pavilion is Mika Kuraya, a curator at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo whose proposal of a solo exhibition by Tanaka was selected from a group of five other candidates that included proposals for the likes of Tadashi Kawamata, On Kawara, Yoko Ono and Hiroshi Sugimoto. Kuraya and Tanaka plan to address the aftereffects of the March 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami in a reconsideration of how Japan presents itself to the world. “Both Tanaka and myself have experienced the disaster partially through power cuts, damage caused by radiation, and so on,” he said. “As for the awful experiences of people who lost close relatives, whose houses were destroyed, or who had to leave their sphere of life due to the nuclear accident, the only means we can find of accessing these are to harness our powers of imagination and to not forget.” The Japanese-born, Los Angeles-based was included in the 2011 Yokohama Triennale, and his work has been shown at the Mori Art Museum, the Palais de Tokyo, and the Asia Society.