ART BASEL QATAR – Shigeko Kubota
Booth D106, February 5 - 7, 2026

Forming the foundational imagery of her work "Duchampiana: Video Chess," Shigeko Kubota documented the 1968 "Reunion" chess match between composer John Cage and artist Marcel Duchamp through still photographs for the Japanese arts journal Bijutsu Techo (Art Notebook). In the following years, she recaptured these static images on tape using a PortaPak, animating them to form the basis of the video "Marcel Duchamp and John Cage" (1972) and the video sculpture "Duchampiana: Video Chess" (1968-1975). Colorized and layered against the performance's live soundtrack, Kubota's work expanded photographic documentation into a vision of video as a hybrid medium capable of new aesthetic approaches.

SHIGEKO KUBOTA
Duchampiana: Video Chess, 1968-1975
Single-channel color-synthesized video (color, sound), twelve-inch LCD monitor, plywood, glass, plastic chess pieces and text
29 x 25 x 25 inches (73.7 x 63.5 x 63.5 cm)

Reunion: Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, 1968
Black and white photographs
40 15/16 x 55 3/8 inches (104 x 140.7 cm); 54 5/16 x 40 11/16 inches (138 x 103.3 cm); 40 7/16 x 52 13/16 inches (102.7 x 134.1 cm)