TabaimoDrawing by Hand

Tabaimo interviewed on the occasion of the exhibition Moderna Museet Nu: Tabaimo at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, January 31–April 19, 2009. Courtesy Moderna Museet.

Tabaimo’s computer-animated works bridge Japanese tradition and modernity. Starting with hundreds or even thousands of manga-like line drawings made with calligraphy pens, her soft shading and coloration recall that of ukiyo-e woodblock prints.1 Indeed, her early influences include authors of the horror manga genre, Junji Ito and Kazuo Umeda, and the discovery of a book of nineteenth-century ukiyo-e prints by Hokusai (1760–1849).2 Tabaimo’s drawings are scanned into digital files and animated with computer software. The process—aided by the artist’s studio assistant: her younger sister, Imoimo— involves combining discrete drawings into a single image, then sequencing those images on timelines to create animations projected onto setlike screens in immersive, often panoramic installations.

  1. Rory Padeken, “A Dream Within a Dream,” in Tabaimo: Her Room, exh. brochure (San José, CA: San José Museum of Art, 2016). ↩︎

  2. Ashley Rawlings, “Tabaimo: All That Creeps Beneath the Surface,” ArtAsiaPacific 71 (November/December 2010): 100. ↩︎