Hiroshi Fuji creates installations, performances, and events that focus on community. He uses materials deemed useless or valueless by society – empty plastic water bottles, discarded food packaging, and old toys – to create works of art ranging from monumental sculptures to theatrical performances that conceive art as an agent for social change. Kaekko, a project first initiated in Japan, is a hallmark of his artistic practice – one that offers solutions to over-consumption and waste. The project simulates the model of a bazaar. Children exchange their outgrown or unwanted toys with one another, creating a new market and new values for formerly worthless items. To date, Kaekko has occurred in various locales globally over 3,000 times.

Toys collected at the Kaekko will be recycled into fanciful sculptures of birds in art-making sessions, or Kaeru, led by Fuji. Kaeru means to transform, to exchange, or to change in Japanese; it is also the word for frog. A selection of these sculptures will be on view at the Museum of International Folk Art during the Biennial.

Fine Arts for Children & Teens (FACT), 1516 Pacheco Street