Rie Tachikawa Interview Full May 2026

You vacuum away the real dust only to recreate it on the gallery wall?

Your 2018 piece, Memorandum of Oblivion , involved taping a single, broken teacup to the ceiling of a room in an abandoned apartment. People waited in line for four hours to see it. Why?

Did we miss a key question about Rie Tachikawa’s method? This is the most complete interview available in English. For updates, follow our newsletter—but Tachikawa would prefer you didn’t. rie tachikawa interview full

Because a photograph of my work is the death of my work. My pieces change with the humidity, the time of day, the number of people in the room. A digital file is fixed. It is a corpse. I want my art to be a rumor. You hear about it from a friend. You walk three kilometers to a warehouse. You sign a waiver. You enter a room alone. That journey—the search —is part of the piece.

In the sprawling, chaotic tapestry of contemporary Japanese art, few threads are as delicate—and as structurally vital—as that of . While her peers often compete for attention through scale or shock value, Tachikawa has built a two-decade career on the opposite: subtraction. Her work, which spans installation, sound art, and what she calls "found object choreography," asks the viewer to listen to the space between words and look at the dust motes floating in a sunbeam. You vacuum away the real dust only to

I call it "controlled neglect." For six months before an exhibition, I stop cleaning my studio. I let dust accumulate. I let spiderwebs grow. Then, I photograph the dust patterns. Then, I vacuum everything clean. The photographs become the blueprint for where I place objects.

(Long silence) Then the wind will sit in the chair. The wind has been waiting for a long time. It deserves a rest. I photograph the dust patterns.

(Smiles) Art is the discipline of lying beautifully. I lie about decay. I lie about emptiness. But the feeling you get when you stand in my room? That feeling is the truth. Part 4: The Full Archive – Why No Digital Copies? I: This is for fans desperately searching for a "Rie Tachikawa interview full" video or PDF—you famously refuse to archive your work digitally. Why?