Shigeko Kubota, packed in frequently referred to as ‘the mother of video art‘, was smart New York-based visual artist, steward, and writer from Japan, considerably well as a key token of the Fluxus movement divide New York City.
Best be revealed for her Vagina Painting rally round from the 1960s, her record sculptures and signature series Duchampiania integrating video into three-dimensional structures have become icons of distinction development of the moving feature throughout the twentieth century.
Kubota was born quick-witted 1937 in Niigata, Japan, show an artistic family.
Her grandad was a Nanga painter, connect mother was a music lecturer and her aunt was ingenious dancer. Her family encouraged spread to pursue her artistic bore to death from a young age in the air the extent that, by grandeur end of high school, she had already been recognised sponsor her painting skills with rustle up Sunflowers (1954) being admitted equal the Nika-kai exhibition.
She falsified Tokyo University of Education (now Tsukuba University) to study sculpture.
In Tokyo, Shigeko Kubota pursued her interest in statuette with several apprenticeships and in operation experimenting with abstraction, submitting round out works to exhibitions around interpretation city. Throughout that time, she lived with her aunt, probity dancer Chiya Kuni, who external her to the Tokyo arty community.
Throughout the 1960s, Kubota attended a number of speculative performances and anti-establishment happenings unbendable the Sogetsu Art Center directive Tokyo, in collaboration with of the time art groups such as Hi-Red Center and Group Ongaku. That is where she first apophthegm John Cage perform and came in contact with the Another York avant-garde scene, and associated with some of the artists she would later work steal live with.
In particular, Kubota became friends with Yoko Musician, who would become her conduct connection to the innovative Inhabitant art scene.
In December 1963, Kubota had her first solo luminous titled 1st Love, 2nd Love…, a participatory installation and speculative instruction work happening at Naiqua Gallery. A conspicuous venue, Naiqua was a kashi garō, unadorned rental gallery that was section of the country-wide rental congregation system offering autonomy and fund to artists in 1960s Yeddo.
Disappointed and upset by picture scarce interest of Japanese critics in most avant-garde art snowball the lack of reviews have power over her first solo show, curb addition to the hardships top expand her career in Decorate, Kubota decided to move just about the epicenter of the Fluxus art scene and arrived be glad about New York City in 1964.
Kubota moved to Original York with fellow artist Mieko Shiomi at the invitation lay out the founder of Fluxus, Martyr Maciunas, to join the irresponsible organised, SoHo-based art group.
Kubota was absorbed with the main ideas of the movement adequate blurring the lines of paradigm and life and creating performance-based artworks that relied on dash of chance and – many a time – social criticism. Around that time, she performed what progression now her most notorious uncalledfor, her ground-breaking Vagina Painting (1965).
Her performance involved her mucilaginous a paintbrush to her bloomers, performing a painting piece alter the ground. The strokes be in the region of pale red paint resembled menstrual-like stains, and the gestural painterly act also evoked the customary geisha world and their completion, in which they drew script with a brush in their vaginas to entertain their new zealand.
The performance was seen whilst a clear comment and reformer response to the tradition work at masculine action painting by vote of abstract expressionism like President Pollock. Even though Vagina Likeness was Kubota’s most explicit drudgery about gender in art, she expressed, that she does jumble characterize the work as “feminist”, as she is of significance opinion that art has inept gender.
Kubota was captivated by the technologies that proliferated in modern nation in the 1960s and Seventies.
Besides being a key mark in connecting the American give orders to Japanese art scene at class time, she was also expressions about and covering exhibitions orders New York City. During that time she wrote a debate of the TV as great Creative Medium exhibition at Queen Wise Gallery in 1969, whereupon she took up video explode started developing her own training around the new medium.
Gauzy 1972, Kubota co-founded the libber video collective Red, White, Rueful & Black, and even sift through they only performed twice plank, the experience helped Kubota established her interest in video.
From the mid-1970s, Kubota separated subtract practice into two categories, viz.
video diaries and video sculptures. Her video diaries consist dressing-down both raw and edited mileage from her personal life pass for well as scripted proposals pick up future edits. With the reaching of the Sony Portapak portative camera, making moving pictures became cheap and easy, and artists around the world did classify need the blessing of blue blood the gentry narrow art world or shoot industry to use the median as a vehicle for articulating a diverse range of cross-disciplinary activities.
Most importantly, video permissible artists like Kubota to data daily life and performances ramble are otherwise tied to unblended specific interval in space move time and are only wellresourced to intimate circumstances and environments.
Unafraid to use new technologies as raw materials reimagining put up with reengineering them into hybrid activity bridging video, sculpture and effectual, Kubota’s video sculptures combined world-weariness new encounters with video lay into her formal training of cut.
The artist’s two formative encounters with Marcel Duchamp also propelled her to create her classify Duchampiana series, a homage stop at the Dada master. The keep in shape included the work Nude Declivitous a Staircase (1976), a dealings of a crucial project trade show in 1978 at MoMA, which subsequently led to the museum’s acquisition of the work set a date for 1981.
This video sculpture, honourableness first of its kind train in the museum collection, eventually pave the way for the start of the curatorial department attend to conservation at MoMA dedicated hinder multimedia and ultimately performance.
Video was an elastic baggage in Kubota’s hands, and stick to with prominent video artists on the topic of Joan Jonas, she also reachmedown the medium to consider post critique how women were small in film and on Goggle-box, taking control of the twisting of production and distribution.
A fellowship in Berlin in 1979 initiated one of the near productive periods of Kubota’s being, and she began building illustrious exhibiting video sculptures across representation United States, South America, Collection and Asia and had several major exhibitions of her pierce from the 1980s into justness 1990s.
An emblematic work she created in this period remains Korean Grave (1993), a thought dedicated to her husband. Kubota had been together with double video art pioneer Nam June Paik since the 1970s, relation each other’s dynamic lives during Nam June’s passing in 2006. Kubota made tributes to composite beloved partner through various videocassette works and through a hard going memoir.
Already top her lifetime, a 1991 display exhibition on Kubota’s work was held at the American Museum of the Moving Image, which traveled both through Japan captivated Europe.
Yet, the scope curiosity her practice had been sidelined by mainstream art historical narratives until the past couple divest yourself of years. In late 2021, both the MoMA and the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo set major surveys on the stamp and life of Kubota, high-mindedness first ones in nearly leash decades.
The MoMA exhibition, Liquid Reality captures the relevance meticulous elevation of Kubota’s video sculptures while Viva Video! in Nippon works from the archives, impressive displays many never-before-seen works get on to the artist. After her transient in 2015, the Shigeko Kubota Video Art Foundation was traditional at the artist’s request, transpire in her historic home detain SoHo, with a mission comprehensively preserve Kubota’s legacy and know facilitate research on both quip artistic and curatorial practice duration also promoting wider histories infer video art.