Tabaimo: MEKURUMEKU

Overview

No one does inner turmoil and domestic horror quite like the Japanese. It seems so many of their artists have found that magical space between buttoned-up manners and social graces and unbound anger, anxiety and fear. The secret seems to lie in restrained contradiction. In a major solo show at the MCA, Mekurumeku, Japanese artist Tabaimo has managed to strike this eerie balance perfectly, presenting a body of work spanning just over a decade.

The exhibition of six video installations moves from early work to two brand new commissions, and it’s a satisfying progression. Where the early work recalls traditional Edo-period woodcuts in its aesthetic — intricate and rigid line work, rich vivid colours and frequently depictions of everyday life — later work displays a sparser, more monochromatic and restrained eye. Across all, the modern and traditional sit uneasily side-by-side.

Despite a visible progression between her work of the early 2000s and today, there are a lot of recurring motifs in Tabaimo’s painstaking videos, each of which is hand-drawn and takes up to a year to produce. There is a sense of quiet menace, a disconnect between our interior and public lives, constantly shifting perspective and repeated visual cues — tentacles, water, disembodied or metamorphic limbs and hands all recur. Itching is another recurring feature, an artistic representation of a real-life affliction; Tabaimo has long suffered a painful and persistent dermatitis.

There is a lot to be gleaned from Mekuremeku, and a lot to like. It’s surreal visual language is both metaphoric — of contemporary Japanese life, of our submerged interior lives, of the terror that waits in the home — and aesthetically sublime. The images themselves, their soundtracks and environments all combine to immerse audiences in a giddy world where your footing is never sure. Walls curve, inside becomes out, and subaquatic noises bleed from one work to the next. Ten points for install.

Mekuremeku is a good move by the MCA. Coming off the back of the behemoth Biennale, it’s refreshing to see the space devoted to a singular and logical solo show, especially of an artist from the Asia-Pacific. Tabaimo’s work is accessible and appealing without losing its aesthetic or conceptual value, and it strikes me as a show that will hold up under repeat visits. The best show from a Japanese artist at the MCA this year *winky face*.