Art 21 Lecture: Tabaimo

Tabaimo, public conVENience, 2006, video still

Ayako Tabata or better known as Tabaimo, is a Japanese contemporary artist who utilizes drawing and video installations as her artistic medium. Her art takes viewers into a different world, one we may feel uncomfortable visiting.  Tabaimo uses a combination of ukiyoe woodcuts and manga and Japanese comic drawing to bring her bizarre animations to life.

 

Tabaimo transforms the gallery space into private and public everyday places (bathrooms, commuter trains, kitchens etc.) and then reveals the dark, unsettling and unseen things that can happen within them, underneath the orderly everyday life in modern Japan.  In her exhibition titled Boundaries, Tabaimo explores the lack of boundaries between private and public spaces in the age of the Internet.  For example, in her video installation of a public restroom the restroom itself is a public and popular place but becomes extremely private once you enter a stall.  Tabaimo is conscious of how there are different kinds of communities on the internet that are divided for specific things, thus they become like private stalls in a restroom and then from time to time, there are images on the internet captured by cameras that intrude that private place.  In this way, the private becomes public.

Tabaimo uses human figures but abstracts them into a Japanese cartoonish form.  The people are not very attractive looking, they look awkward and kind of creepy.  Strange things happen to these people, though their predicaments symbolize something.  An example of this is how a housewife picks up a tiny newsman from the cupboard and then slices him up as part of the ingredients for her dinner.  According to Tabaimo, this symbolizes how the housewife is listening to horrific or painful news story on the TV while she cooks her meal, however the news is often forgotten moments later.

The mood Tabaimo establishes through her art causes it to be immersive and interactive. By using her animations and installations, she effectively creates strange worlds that may make an audience uncomfortable. Her animations occupy the walls surrounding the audience rather than just being shown on one wall which is the traditional way of showcasing video medium. In this way, Tabaimo transforms the gallery space into something entirely different, one that consumes and immerses its audience. The art acts upon the viewers by causing them to try and make sense of the imagery surrounding them. I would love to one day experience walking into the worlds she created and experience it.

Tabaimo, teleco-soup, 2011 video installation

Art 21 Lecture: Shahzia Sikander

Shahzia Sikander, Pleasure Pillars, 2001

Shahzia Sikander was born in Pakistan and specializes in India and Persian miniature painting.  She blends the Eastern traditional painting methods with the Western contemporary elements such as self expression and abstraction.  

Sikander had gone to art school in Pakistan where the students sat on sheets with their shoes outside working on small paper, very precise, methodical and minimum.  Recurring themes in Sikander’s work is the mixing of the Hindu and Muslim iconography and veiling and unveiling.  For example, in one piece titled “Hood's Red Rider #1” Sikander takes a Hindu goddess with multiple arms and puts a veil over her which is identified as a Muslim article of clothing

Her works somewhat reflects the teaching she had received in Pakistan; they are precise with clean lines, miniature sized but with complex subject matter.  Sikander often paints human forms, mostly women, in a stylized form.  They are wearing traditional indian garments.  She tweaks this traditional style of painting and adds abstraction, in which she can just give you an idea or shape of a human form.  She paints patterns like circles or wavy lines resembling Arabic writing or just shapes that convey a sense of movement.

I can feel the spirituality behind Sikander’s works.  I was caught up in the many fine details in her paintings which are charged with meaning. I learned that miniature artwork may take years and years to complete despite it’s size.  She comes from a place where Westerners believe where women are suppressed, however it did not hold true to her or in her family where all her sisters had come out successful, supported by their mother and father

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Shahzia Sikander, Fleshy Weapons, 1997