Chie Matsui facts for kids

Chie Matsui is a talented artist from Japan, born in Osaka in 1960. She creates art using many different things like drawings, paintings, videos, sculptures, and photos. She often combines these into big art displays called installations. Her amazing artworks have been shown all over Japan and in other countries. For example, her art was featured at the Venice Biennale in 1990 and at the MoMA in New York City.

Chie Matsui's Early Life

Chie Matsui grew up in a family connected to a Buddhist temple. As a child, she learned traditional Japanese calligraphy, which is a beautiful way of writing. Her father was a high school teacher who taught ethics and world history.

When Chie was in elementary school, she was often sick. She spent a lot of time at home reading and drawing. She loved drawing pictures inspired by the manga comics she enjoyed. She also listened to the sounds of a lumbermill near her house. Her parents often took her to the Osaka Museum of Fine Arts, which was close to their home.

Chie also played the piano when she was young. She listened to a lot of classical music, like songs by Tchaikovsky, Dvořák, and Liszt. She says that art and music worked together to inspire her when she was growing up.

In 1984, she earned her master's degree in Textiles from the Kyoto City University of Arts. She studied dyeing in the Department of Crafts. Her early experiences with calligraphy and textile design greatly influenced her later artwork.

How Chie Matsui Started Her Art Career

While she was still at university, Chie Matsui began showing her art. She had solo and group exhibitions in the Kansai area of Japan. She started making installations using many different materials. These included plaster, sand, tree branches, fur, and photographs.

Her installations combined sculptures, objects, drawings, paintings, and photos. She put them together freely, paying close attention to what made each material special.

From the late 1980s to the 1990s, her art grew into very large installations. She often helped build her exhibition spaces herself. Sometimes she would construct walls, rooms, hallways, and stairs using bricks. These were called "site-specific" installations because they were made for a particular place.

Chie Matsui became well-known as an installation artist. A curator named Mizuo Kato wrote about her work before the year 2000. He said that in Matsui's installations, objects with different textures were placed around a space. To understand the art, viewers had to walk around and connect the pieces. These artworks were not just for looking at; they were meant to be experienced with all your senses.

Chie Matsui's Later Art and Video Works

After the year 2000, Chie Matsui started focusing more on video art. Her Heidi series is a famous example. But she still loved creating installations and even added performances to her art.

In 2005, an art event called the Yokohama Triennale took place. Chie Matsui created five small, individual pavilions for it. Each pavilion had a tented roof made of lavender fabric and wooden walls. This installation was called An Allegorial Vessels – Rose. It looked like a tiny village among all the other artworks. Inside each pavilion, Matsui showed a different video. This project showed her continued interest in installations and her growing use of video art.

More recently, Chie Matsui has also included more drawings in her art. Her Ms. Piece series is an example of this. For this series, she made one drawing every day. These drawings were shown at the 2014 Yokohama Triennale.

Her artworks have been displayed both in Japan and around the world. Her art was part of the Venice Biennale in 1990. Other important exhibitions include Art in Japan Today: 1985-1995 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo in 1995. She also participated in the Yokohama 2005: International Triennale of Contemporary Art.

Where Chie Matsui's Art Is Kept

Chie Matsui's artworks are part of the permanent collections in several museums. These include the Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, and the National Museum of Art, Osaka.