Tabaimo

Tabaimo is known for her distinctive creative approach of composing hand-drawn animations as installations. Everyday scenes rendered in hues and carefree rhythms reminiscent of ukiyo-e prints illuminate dark corners of modern society, and the inner lives of individuals, in a manner surreal and cynical.

In her striking debut, 1999’s Japanese Kitchen, the routine of a housewife in a cramped kitchen, overwhelmed by the myriad tasks of daily life, unfolds in a video resembling a picture scroll. Absurd scenes such as a weather report forecasting high school students raining from the sky, and a politician giving a speech in a microwave oven, seem to lampoon news destined to be simply consumed without any solution to the problem of youth suicide, for example, or of low trust in politics. Other works set in typically Japanese scenarios such as a pedestrian crossing, a public bathhouse, and a commuter train, also pose some searching questions on twists amid the smooth running of society, and the unsettling realities that lurk beneath the surface of daily living. This style of production earned Tabaimo wide acclaim, and resulted in her selection for the first Yokohama Triennale in 2001, the youngest artist in the lineup.

Following time in London in 2003, Tabaimo reached a turning point in her practice. Having previously produced critical depictions of aspects of the outside world of Japanese society, with the more objective viewpoint and opportunity for introspection afforded by her time overseas, she began to inquire more deeply into the relationship between “inside and out.” public conVENience (2006) for instance shows, on three vast screens, the behaviors of people in a women’s toilet. A public space, yet a space where people engage with themselves while affecting a lack of interest in each other; as such the work calls to mind the online world, with its strange schema by which strangers share information intimately in strictly siloed spaces.

Then in dolefullhouse (2007), Tabaimo takes a close-up look at her own eczema-prone hands. The hands arranging elegant furniture in the dollhouse resemble life-forms with something squirming within, occasionally relentlessly scratching fingers or wrists as if in irritation at the divorcing of ideal and reality.

In 2011, as Japanese representative at the Venice Biennale, Tabaimo presented teleco-soup. Inspired by the proverb of the frog in the well, this work included mirrors in the space to expand the images, and give the viewer a more immersively physical experience.

Tabaimo has also embarked on a number of collaborations, starting with a 2006 stage production with Ohad Naharin of the Israeli Batsheva Dance Company. Following illustrations for a serialized novel, and collaboration with a dancer, in 2024 she unveiled Touch on an Absence, a joint production with overseas animation artists, in which visitors relied on light and sound to move around the spaces of the installation. Through these activities with creators from other genres, Tabaimo has succeeded in pushing the boundaries of her own range of expression even further.