Mitsuko Tabe

Early years Mitsuko Tabe was born in Taitung in the Japan-occupied Taiwan in 1933. Her father, Kogoro Ishibashi, applied for a police officer position in Taiwan after the bankruptcy of the family’s sawmill, and subsequently moved the entire family there. Tabe lived in the countryside of Taiwan before the start of kindergarten and went to Taitung National School for elementary school. In her early years, the family traveled frequently between Taiwan and Japan, before settling back in Fukuoka after WWII in 1946. Tabe remembered staying for some time in Amagi, a smaller town near Fukuoka during her early years, and spending a lot of time learning sewing and dressmaking from her mother Rie. In 1951, graduating from the Fukuoka Prefectural Ukiwa High School, Tabe began painting on her own. At around the same time she also started working in the sales section of a coal company in Fukuoka. In the same year when she started working at Iwataya, Tabe joined the company’s French and painting circles, two of the company's hobby circles. These hobby circles, referred to as Saibi-kai, were established by the company for publicity purposes. Tabe drew the streets of downtown Fukuoka, where Iwataya was located, and worked on many paintings of landscape and daily objects. As one of the few female members, Tabe brought a feminist viewpoint to the group. Anger of Fishes won the Asahi Silver Prize at the 3rd Western Women's Art Exhibition (1959) and the Gold Prize at the 3rd Western Japan Western-style Painting Newcomer's Excellence Exhibition (1960), and was exhibited in the 2nd Kyushu Independent Exhibition organized by the Nishinippon Shimbun. Placards series (Purakādo, プラカード, 1961) Tabe sourced magazine cutouts and kiss-shaped stamps and used resin to produce these collages. The magazine cutouts contain images of American popular culture, especially those of African American jazz musicians and soldiers at war. Three of the five Placards feature a representation of the African continents, and two of them also had strands of reddish hemp palm fiber pasted onto the collages, pointing at the blood shed in acquiring freedom. The images and the map loosely point to the civil rights movement in the United States and perhaps the independences of African nations. The installation consists of the hip portion of three mannequins and the torso portions of two child mannequins. The hip sections, covered by cotton, cloth, and scattered nails, were placed upside down on pedestals against a wall. With an opening in the center that resembles the exposure of the uterus, each hip section had a vacuum tube inserted into the reproductive organ. The artist also used ping-pong balls to outline the opening. Above the hip sections, the child torso sections were hung horizontally on the same wall. Meanwhile, Artificial Placenta did not resonate with the female audience at the time of its release. Tabe said, “[Ideas of] women’s revolution, feminism, and gender did not yet enter Japan, so there was no response from women even though I was making an important statement. She also created a space lined with the legs of mannequins wearing stockings, which was described by critic Yoshida Yoshie as “a cathedral of nymphomaniac rituals unique to the Kyūshū-ha’s women's group.” Sex Museum (Sekkusu Hakubutsukan, セックス博物館, 1968) Source: In the 1969 exhibition, she participated in a parade, carrying a doll on her back as she walked through the city, trying to demonstrate the hardships housewives faced in raising their children. Since 1994, Tabe has exhibited worldwide, including New York, Washington D.C., and Paris. Between 1995 and 2010, she served as the first president of the Fukuoka City Art Association. Since 2002, she has also collaborated with American jazz keyboardist Bob James. In 2015, she established the "3-Chome Art School" in Tenjin, Fukuoka City, under the title of “the world's smallest art school.” ==Other notable artworks==