Tomoko Kawai (JP/DE, b. 1977) is a Japanese artist based in Berlin, Germany. Kawai explores human nature through photographic acts, interdisciplinary activities, and fieldwork in urban and natural environments in her artistic practice. She traces the invisible structure in society and the laws of nature through an ecological perspective and physical approach, she seeks a new role for humans as members of the natural world.
In this photographic series Becoming Animals, she reflects on human-animal relations from the perspective of life and death that she gains from the scenery of life in the photographs, including animal collections, and electronic measuring devices. The qualities of living animals that seem to be alive are captured and homogeneous with those of sparkling machines. Death, which belongs to nature, is absent here. The colors, shapes, and materials of the photographic images are not connected to life or death. Thus, in this work, where life and death are absent, the world created by humans is like a fuzzy dream. Kawai considers whether it would be possible to approach animals by homogenizing with them from the perspective of the absent nature inherent in these photographs.
