Crow

2016

Japanese, born 1975

Internationally renowned for her video installations in architectural settings, Tabaimo created this utushi (homage) to the crow screens in the Seattle Asian Art Museum’s art deco building. To create this work, Tabaimo borrowed the forms of the crows directly from the screens, tracing all 90 crows in the screens by hand, scanning her hand-drawn images into a computer, and then animating them. Through this process, she discovered that it’s most likely the painter of the screens closely observed one crow and then used it as a model, depicting 90 different poses of this one bird. With modern technology and her artistic creativity, Tabaimo enables the crows in these already remarkable screens to take flight in this dynamic video installation.

Single-channel color video, sound

4 min., 10 sec.

Asian Art Acquisition Fund

2017.5

Provenance: The artist; [James Cohan Gallery, New York]; purchased from gallery by Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, 2017

Photo: Mark Woods

Not currently on view

Resources

Exhibition HistorySeattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Tabaimo: Utsutsushi Utsushi, Nov. 11, 2016 - Feb. 26, 2017.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Asian Art Museum, Boundless: Stories of Asian Art, Feb. 8, 2020 - ongoing [on view beginning Jan. 13, 2023].

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