- Gladys Lou
Opening Reception, Saturday, April 4, 1pm - 4pm
Limited free seating is available on a roundtrip chartered bus from New York City for the April 4th opening. Reservations are required and can be made on this by calling +1 845-758-7598 or emailing Mary Rozell at mrozell@bard.edu.
Artist: Shigeko Kubota
“Curator Diary”: The Curatorial Work of Shigeko Kubota presents the work of Japanese American artist-curator Shigeko Kubota (久保田 成子, 1937–2015), emphasizing her role as a cultural mediator and community organizer who advocated for women video artists, placed video alongside film, and facilitated international exchanges between the United States, Japan, and beyond.
While Kubota is recognized as an early video and Fluxus artist, equally important to shaping video as a global artistic language was her support of other artists as the video curator at Anthology Film Archives in New York (1974–83). In Japan, she organized Tokyo–New York Video Express (1974), a three-day screening and live performance event in Tokyo spotlighting both Japanese and American artists. She was also an active member of the artist collectives Video Hiroba and Red, White, Yellow, and Black. Her extensive writing on video and community initiatives, such as Video Talk Shows (1976–83), created forums for artists, curators, and institutional professionals to discuss timely topics related to video art.
Featuring materials from the Shigeko Kubota Video Art Foundation and the John G. Hanhardt Archives at the CCS Bard Archives, the exhibition situates Kubota’s curatorial initiatives within the social and cultural context of the New York avant-garde of the 1970s and ’80s, rooted in collaborations among Fluxus artists and underground film and video communities. Her work embodied the era’s collective and experimental spirit, fostering dialogue within second-wave feminism and advancing video as an international medium of exchange.
The exhibition title draws from a chapter of Kubota’s video project Broken Diary, titled Curator Diary (1974), which documents her appearance in a cable-TV video art telethon for Anthology Film Archives. In a typewritten note about the project, Kubota describes her lifelong relationship with video as one of intimacy and intensity. She explains that “…as a Video artist, curator and woman, my life has vacillated between ecstasy and despair; my portapack has been a faithful chronicler to this rugged landscape.” The exhibition traces Kubota’s curatorial practice as an extension of her bold and whimsical character, reflecting her feminist thinking and her lifelong dedication to advancing video art.
