Biography
Kubota was born in 1937 to a family of monk lineage associated with a Buddhist temple in Niigata Prefecture, Japan, where she lived through World War II. As a young adult, she moved to Tokyo to study sculpture at the Tokyo University of Education. She was introduced to the experimental music collective in Tokyo called Gurupu Ongaku (Group Music) by her aunt Chiya Kuni, an established modern dancer. Members of Gurupu Ongaku included Takehisa Kosugi, Chieko Shiomi, Yasunao Tone, who were experimenting with tape recorders, noise music, and avant-garde performances in the early 1960s. Shigeko Kubota first met John Cage and Yoko Ono at Tokyo Bunka Hall in Ueno when he was on tour there in 1962. Yoko Ono was a dancer for Cage's concert tour through Japan in 1962.
In December 1963, Kubota had her first solo show, "1st Love, 2nd Love..." at Naiqua Gallery in Tokyo, an alternative/ avant-garde space in Shinbashi, Tokyo. Later that year, she moved to New York after exchanging letters with George Maciunas about the New York Fluxus scene. Her first show in New York was on July 4, 1965 at Cinemateque as part of the perpetual Fluxfest, where she performed her famous "Vagina Painting." After this exhibition, Kubota exhibited her works regularly in New York. In 1965 she was married to Nam June Paik after divorcing her first husband, the composer David Behrman.
Kubota continued her studies at New York University and the New School for Social Research 1965-1967. She studied at the Art School of the Brooklyn Museum 1967-1968. Kubota taught at the School of Visual Arts, and was video artist-in residence at Brown University in 1981 and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1973, 1981, 1982, and 1984, and at the Kunst Akademie in Düsseldorf in 1979. She also helped to coordinate the first annual Women's Video Festival at The Kitchen in 1972. From 1974-1982 she was a curator at the Anthology Film Archives.
Read more about this topic: Shigeko Kubota
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