Moderna Museet Malmo shows Tabaimo's Latest Video Works

Monday, 02 February 2009 00:07

 

Malmo, Sweden - Japanese artist Tabaimo (born 1975) has won acclaim for her captivating and sometimes disturbing animations. Her art is a merger of social satire and personal experiences. She primarily works with video installations, where the films are projected in a demarcated space, part room, part stage, which invites viewers to participate in and contribute to the work. On exhibition 31 January through 19 April, 2009 at the Moderna Museet Malmo.

Tabaimo investigates issues of identity, female experiences and the individual’s place within the collective. Often set in a trivial, everyday environment where the course of events and characters are driven towards the absurd, comic and at times grotesque. ”I don’t feel it necessary to portray the world as it really is,” she says. Contemporary Japan meets fable and obsession in these self-willed drawings, which both borrow from and break the rules of the traditional woodcut.

At Moderna Museet, we see three of Tabaimo’s latest works: two video installations and a film. public conVENience (2006) takes place in a women’s public lavatory, a paradoxically intimate, yet at the same time anonymous, establishment. Strange occurrences happen among the women who pass by each other in the thinly screened off cubicles. And for whose benefit is the moth documenting everything, its eyes having been replaced by the shutter of a camera.

In midnight sea (2006/2008) a stylised, nocturnal seascape opens before us, a scene that could be taken from one of Hokusai’s classical woodcuts. Waves break against the black surface of the sea, a Japanese metaphor for the skin and aging. In the deep, we see demonic creatures moving about, like a troubled subconscious.

In the film, dolefullhouse (2007), we see two hands redecorating a doll’s house in a Western bourgeois style, increasingly restless and forced, until the facade literally falls apart.

Tabaimo has exhibited at a large number of solo and group shows since graduating from Kyoto University of Art and Design 1999. She has participated in the Yokohama Triennale 2001, as well as biennales in Valencia 2001, Sao Paulo 2002 and Venice 2007.

Solo exhibitions (a selection): Hara Museum of Art, Tokyo, 2006, Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris, 2006, James Cohan Gallery, New York, 2008, Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo, 2008. Group exhibitions (a selection): How Latitudes Become Form, Walker Art Center, Milwaukee, 2003; ARS 06, Kiasma, Helsinki, 2006; Chanel Mobile Art, Hong Kong, Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles, London, Moscow and Paris, 2008.

Visit Moderna Museet Malmo at : http://modernamuseet.se/v4/templates/template6.asp?lang=Eng&id=1745

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