Female Iconoclasts: Shigeko Kubota, the Mother of Video Art
Shigeko Kubota, now frequently referred to as &#;the mother of video art&#;, was a New York-based visual artist, curator, and writer from Japan, as well as a key figure of the Fluxus movement in New York City. Best known for her Vagina Painting performance from the s, her video sculptures and signature series Duchampiania integrating video into three-dimensional structures have become icons of the development of the moving image throughout the twentieth century.
Biography of Shigeko Kubota
Kubota was born in in Niigata, Japan, to an artistic family. Her grandfather was a Nanga painter, her mother was a music teacher and her aunt was a dancer. Her family encouraged her to pursue her artistic interest from a young age to the extent that, by the end of high school, she had already been recognised for her painting skills with her Sunflowers () being admitted at the Nika-kai exhibition. She attended Tokyo University of Education (now Tsukuba University) to study sculpture.
Living in Tokyo
In Tokyo, Shigeko Kubota pursued her interest in sculpture with several apprenticeships and started experimenting with a
“It Rains in My Heart, It Rains on My Video Art”
Rediscovering Shigeko Kubota’s Broken Diary
Lori Zippay
"It is about time that I made sense out of nonsense, order out of chaos. Therefore I will spend one or two years of my life on editing the hundreds of hours of videotapes, some of them joyous, some of them painful, some of them public and some of them very private…" – Shigeko Kubota, Audio (Video) Biography in Twelve Chapters () A Broken Diary
In , Shigeko Kubota () initiated an extraordinary series of autobiographical single-channel video works—collectively titled Broken Diary—that chronicled her everyday life. These low-tech video journals are intimate and idiosyncratic, at times comic, at times poignant. An eclectic record of personal history and collective memory, the Broken Diary series charts the quotidian details of the artist’s life and, in the process, captures a specific cultural and artistic milieu of the s and s. Conveying a powerful sense of female identity, the Broken Diary journals are among the most resonant but least well-known of Kubota’s works.
Kubota was an innovator who was part of the first, pioneering generation of artists to use video—
Who is Shigeko Kubota?
Shigeko Kubota is a Japanese-born video artist, sculptor and avant-garde performance artist, who lives and works in New York City. Shigeko Kubota’s career was most prominent in the s and s when the Sony Portapak was just beginning to gain popularity among artist and activist circles. Kubota is known for constructing sculptural installations with a strong DIY aesthetic, which include sculptures with embedded monitors playing her original videos. She was a key member and influence on Fluxus, the international group of avant-garde artists centered around George Maciunas, having been involved with the group since witnessing John Cage perform in Tokyo in and subsequently moving to New York in She was closely associated with George Brecht, Jackson Mac Low, John Cage, Joe Jones, Nam June Paik, and Ay-O, other members of Fluxus. Kubota was deemed "Vice Chairman" of the Fluxus Organization in , a somewhat superfluous title given by Brecht.
- Born
Niigata- Also known as
- Spouses
- Nationality
- Profession
- Education
- The New School for Social Research
( - ) - New York University
( - ) - Bachelor of Arts, University of Tsukuba
Sculpture
( - ) - The Brookyn Museum A
By Shigeko Kubota, Oral History Archives of Japanese Art Posted on January 2,
Japanese artists Shigeko Kubota and Shiomi Mieko arrived in New York in at the invitation of George Maciunas. Working in sculpture, performance, and video, Kubota was active in the avant-garde art community of Tokyo in the early s, and then, after her move to the U.S., among the Fluxus artists in New York. In the interview with Miwako Tezuka, below, conducted for the Oral History Archives of Japanese Art and edited by post, she describes what it was like working with artists such as Kosugi Takehisa, the members of Hi Red Center and Group Ongaku (Group music), George Maciunas, and Marcel Duchamp.
Oral History Interview with Shigeko Kubota, conducted by Miwako Tezuka, October 11, , at Kubota&#;s residence in New York City
Oral History Archives of Japanese Art () Transcribed by Kanaoka Naoko Translated by Reiko Tomii
The Japanese version of the interview can be found on the website of the Oral History Archives of Japanese Art. In accordance with Japanese practice, Japanese names are generally written surname first. Exceptions are made for Japanese-born individuals who reside permanently abroad,
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- The New School for Social Research