Tabaimo the Artist

The cover of Hikashu's upcoming album will feature an artwork of Tabaimo, a young female artist who has been recognized internationally as a sensational new voice in contemporary art scene. Her English bio is here.

Many of her work depict modern, daily life of ordinary Japanese, which is often tedious, mundane, and just plain boring. She makes such humdrum things into wonderful pieces of art.

There is an interesting story regarding the origin of her name: "Tabaimo" is a childhood nickname endowed by the friends of her sisters (she is the middle of three sisters). "Taba" is a short of "Tabata," which is her family name, and "imo" means "younger sister." So she uses a nickname of tender years as artist name, which is a kind of unusual in the world of art, but it surely gave her some merit because that childlike name is very easy to remember in Japanese, regarding its pronounciation. Moreover, she gave one more twist: the selection of kanji characters. That is, she applied the unusual kanji characters to the name. She choose "束" [bundle] for "taba," and "芋" [potato] for "imo." So her artist name means "Bundled Potato." This selection is also childlike, and it even gives an impression of somewhat unrefined or unsophiscated, but that was probably her intention.

She is now preparing the artwork for Hikashu. Let's look forward to the finished piece.



"Hatsuimo," the first film document of her work, made in 2001.



Recent exhibition held at an American gallery