Tara Donovan on Material Transcendence

On the occasion of her first solo exhibition in Tokyo, Tara Donovan discusses her transformations of everyday materials and objects—from buttons, plastic straws, Styrofoam cups, pencils, CD-ROM discs, and pins to readymade screens and Slinky toys—into artworks that, as she puts it, "challenge our visual capacities." The artist's presentation at our Tokyo gallery, which continues through July 3, 2025, brings together a selection of her works from the last 20 years. "I embark on a process of faith and failure with my materials," Donovan says in this film. "The most important aspect of this process for me is engaging with the idea of transcendence. Can a material transcend its origins, its purpose, and its appearance to function in the realm of the experiential?"