- 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
Shigeko Kubota: “Video is a ghost of yourself” presents the curatorial 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 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 John G. Hanhardt Archives at the CCS Bard Archives and the Shigeko Kubota Video Art Foundation, 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 comes from a 2014 interview in which Kubota reflected on the nature of video: “Video is a ghost of yourself. It’s like your shadow. It reveals your interior. It still exists after you die.” The exhibition traces her curatorial practice as an extension of her bold and whimsical character—a reflection of her feminist thinking and her lifelong dedication to advancing video art.
