Tetsuo Kashiwada 柏田テツヲ

Born and raised in Osaka, Tetsuo Kashiwada spent three years of his life attending a high school famous for its baseball program deep in the mountains of Miyazaki Prefecture. Surrounded by na-ture and banned from using mobile phones, Kashiwada developed a close relationship with the natural world around him, an experience that shaped him to the person he is today. After launch-ing his career as a photographer at the age of 19, nature inevitably became one of the main sub-jects of his work.
In 2023 Kashiwada submitted a series made during his residency on Yakushima Island to the KYOTOGRAPHIE International Portfolio Review and won the Ruinart Japan Award. In the autumn of 2023 he travelled to Reims to begin a two-week-long artist residency at Ruinart Maison, the first established champagne house in France. Visiting the local vineyard, walking through Ruinart’s preserved forests, and talking to local wine growers, Kashiwada learned first-hand how climate change is already impacting the local biosphere and agriculture. He witnessed how even the tini-est temperature differences can have a drastic effect on the sugar content of grapes. As he reflect-ed on this reality while walking through the vineyard, Kashiwada was caught in a spider’s web. He sensed a connection between the sudden palpability of the almost imperceptible spider web and the processes of global warming and decided to base his residency artwork on this motif.
For his series, Pulling the Void, Kashiwada created his own spider webs, made of coloured thread woven through the leaves and branches of the vineyard. Through these ethereal shapes built into the air, he traces the complex relationship between human action and the surrounding world, with humankind both affecting and being affected by the invisible phenomenon of climate change. In Pulling The Void, Kashiwada once again explores the strength and fragility of life, the diversity and preciousness of nature, and the boundless yet finite nature of the human world.