Tatzu Nishi (b. 1960, Nagoya, Japan) has created unconventional, site-specific public art projects around the world, transforming historical monuments by placing them in domestic settings. His works remove traditional statues from their everyday contexts to create surprising, intimate encounters with familiar monuments, making them accessible to the public in new ways. These projects include In Bed with Martin Luther (2016), a room constructed around a statue of Martin Luther in Eisenbach, Germany; Villa Victoria (2002), a temporary functioning hotel around a statue of Queen Victoria for the 2002 Liverpool Biennial, England; Engel (2002), an imagined one-room apartment over the roof of a 14th-century cathedral in Basel, Switzerland, enclosing a bronze angel-shaped weather vane; Tatzu Nishi: War and peace and in between (2009–10), two living spaces built around equestrian sculptures at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in association with Kaldor Public Art Projects; and The Merlion Hotel (2011), a temporary hotel suite built around Singapore’s iconic Merlion fountain for the 2011 Singapore Biennial. He lives in Berlin and Tokyo.
(as of 2012)
