about

Chaco Kato, an interdisciplinary artist, engages with sculpture, drawing, installation, and community-based projects. Collaboration and negotiation are pivotal in her practice, where collective actions and communal discourse serve as key materials. Kato's ambitious projects stem from basic impulses such as reciprocity, negotiation, weaving, and knotting. These processes create an intimate space for dialogues with everyday materials. 

While her works may appear ’soft and comfortable’, they are grounded in what she calls Zen Punk—a stance and philosophy that embraces anti-aesthetics and a desire for dissonance. It is her worldview where chaos and order, harmony and destruction, stillness and movement coexist in tension; an aesthetic sensibility where the refined impermanence of wabi-sabi meets the primal vitality of the Jōmon culture. Her practice also draws on the bricolage aesthetic of reconstructing fragments of the everyday, as well as the rhizomatic networks described by Deleuze and Guattari. These threads are interwoven with the Japanese philosophical notion that “everything is in constant flux” and a sensitivity to the unspoken meaning that resides “between the lines.”

At the core of Kato's practice lies constant engagement: with evolving spatial environments, shifting social milieus, and novel materials and techniques. Through an exploration into the realms of social dynamics, emotional landscape, and ecological frameworks, she delves into the idea of “the other as dissonance.” Central to her body of work She incorporates the natural cycles of fermentation, composting, and germination into her processes, drawing on the seasons, landscapes, and social contexts as fertile ground for new creative possibilities to emerge.

These elements form the bedrock of a dynamic approach that responds organically to changing seasons, landscapes, societal settings, and creative opportunities. Kato actively challenges binary paradigms, disrupts the traditional artist/non-artist divide, and dismantles hierarchical material structures, utilizing her art as a potent political instrument.

Her work ardently engages with the world, melding art seamlessly into everyday existence while instigating fresh perspectives and novel encounters with our surroundings.

In addition to her solo practice, Kato co-founded the Slow Art Collective with Dylan Martorell since 2009—a collaborative platform shaped by the principles of the Slow Movement and a DIY ethos. Through the collective, she has realised much larger-scale, participatory, and interactive art projects that extend her interest in sustainability, collaboration, and community engagement. The collective’s flexible and inviting approach has sparked new values and connections within local contexts, while expanding its reach to audiences around the world.

More detail about Slow Art Collective here

加藤チャコはメルボルンを拠点に、ドローイング、インスタレーション、そしてコミュニティを基盤としたプロジェクトを展開するアーティストである。
コラボレーションと対話を創作の核に据え、プロセスそのものに価値を置く。織りや結びといった素朴な手作業を通じ、日常的な素材から親密で温もりある特別な空間を紡ぎ出す。

一見すると有機的なやさしく心地よい作品に映るが、その根底には“禅パンク”と呼べる反美学と、不協和音への希求が脈打っている。カオスと秩序、調和と破壊、静と動――相反する概念が拮抗し共存する世界観であり、日本の「侘び寂びの妙」と「縄文の野蛮」が同居する感性でもある。さらに、日常の断片を再構成する「ブリコラージュ」の美学や、ドゥルーズとガタリが提唱した地下茎的ネットワーク「ライゾマティック」の思想が通底し、「すべては常に変化し続ける」という理念や「行間」へのまなざしと深く結びついている。

変化し続ける空間や環境、新たな素材や技術、そして人とのつながりを活動の軸に据え、社会の動きや人々の感情、生態系への眼差しを通して「他者という不協和音」を掘り下げる。発酵、堆肥、発芽といった自然の循環の概念を制作過程に取り込み、季節や風景、社会的背景を糧に、新たな創造の可能性をしなやかに広げていく。

アーティストと非アーティストの境界を越え、固定観念やヒエラルキーの垣根をほどきながら、アートを日常へと溶け込ませる。その営みは、人々に新しい視点や小さな驚き、発見をもたらし、身近な世界との関係性をあらたに編み直す契機となり、それは加藤の政治的なステイトメンとして大きな意味をなしている。

2009年、ディラン・マートレルと共にスローアート・コレクティブを設立。スロームーブメントやDIY精神を生かし、持続可能性、コラボレーション、コミュニティをテーマに活動を続ける。その柔軟で温かみあるアプローチは、地域に新たな価値観やつながりを芽生えさせ、活動の輪を世界各地へと広げている。