Taro Hattori (Richmond, Oakland) is an interdisciplinary installation artist who shows his work nationally and internationally. He has been awarded residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts, the de Young Museum, Omi International Art Center, McColl Center for Art + Innovation, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Taipei Artist Village, and Montalvo Arts Center's Lucas Artists Residency Program. He has received numerous grants and awards from organizations such as West Prize, Center for Cultural Innovation, and The Nomura Cultural Foundation. He was awarded a 2016 Art Matters Foundation grant to support his Rolling Counterpoint project. He currently teaches at California College of the Arts. His website is tarohattori.com.
ARTIST STATEMENT Through my art practice I seek to put myself into situations that make me uncomfortable and then to integrate that sense of discomfort into my broader sense of self and my experience of pleasure. In both my installation and social practice works, I focus on exploring conflict which I believe is essential to the process of personal and societal integration. I believe that the wellbeing of society and individuals can only be achieved by learning to integrate conflict into our processes of development. For example, with my work Exinclusivity I focused on individuals who constitute an essential part of our society but are also considered outcasts. This project addressed how certain unethical labor conditions include temporary laborers in the economy while at the same time, excluding them from participation in everyday life. My practice can be considered as an effort to understand society and individuals as the ongoing integration of dissonances and consonances. -- Taro Hattori