Shigeko Kubota

Shigeko Kubota (1937–2015) was an avant-garde artist, critic, and curator whose works spanned video, sculpture, performance, and text. Initially trained in painting and sculpture, Kubota was a key member of the Tokyo and New York experimental art scenes, and throughout the 1960s participated in happenings and performance before taking up video as her primary medium in the early 1970s. Born in Niigata, Japan, Kubota graduated from the Tokyo University School of Education in 1960, with a degree in sculpture, and participated in happenings as part of the collective Hi Red Center. Disappointed by the lack of critical attention to her work in Japan, the artist decided to move to New York City in 1964, at the invitation of Fluxus impresario George Maciunas. Later dubbed Vice Chairperson of Fluxus, Kubota became a nexus between the Tokyo and New York Fluxus networks throughout the 1970s, participating in Fluxus and Avant-Garde Festivals while facilitating informal, interdisciplinary performances and object-making that blurred the distinction between art and everyday life. An early pioneer of video art, Kubota’s hybrid and thematically interconnected practice included video sculpture, which unified video and three-dimensional forms made from plywood, metal, and water to explore relationships between nature, technology, and memory—often referred to by the artist as “autobiographical objects.” In parallel, the artist also developed a wide-ranging body of video diary: single-channel, documentary-style video interwoven with text that chronicled her everyday life. Kubota served as video curator at the Anthology Film Archives (1974–1982) and exhibited her work widely throughout the 1980s and 1990s, including the 1990 Venice and Sydney Biennales. She also taught at the School of Visual Arts, New York (1978) and was artist in residence at Brown University (1981) and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1973, 1981, 1982, and 1984). A retrospective of her work was presented at the American Museum of the Moving Image, New York, in 1991. She has held solo shows at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1996); The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2021); as well as the Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, National Museum of Art, Osaka; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2020–22). Her work is part of a number of major collections around the world, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art; National Portrait Gallery—Smithsonian Institution; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Folkwang Museum, Essen; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; National Museum of Art, Osaka; Toyama Museum of Modern Art, Toyama; Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art; and Guggenheim, Abu Dhabi.

DESCRIPTION OF THE SHIGEKO KUBOTA VIDEO ART FOUNDATION (SKVAF MISSION STATEMENT)
Founded in 2017, The Shigeko Kubota Video Art Foundation works to promote and preserve the artist’s artworks and oeuvre. It also works to pursue and propagate her cultural legacy by developing and supporting programs to create wider awareness, appreciation, and understanding of the history and future of video art. Additionally, the Foundation develops archival resources and enables in-depth research for students, scholars, and cultural practitioners. Allowing them to explore visual material and historical contextual records via on-site, and online access to our archival resources and references. Our programs also support and encourage artists cultivating new experimentation in new media technology and access to new audiences.