Ritsuko Taho

Ritsuko Taho(田甫 律子,Taho Ritsuko, born 1950)is a Japanese sculptor and installation artist. After moving to the United States, she got her MFA in Sculpture atYale Universityand taught atHarvard UniversityandMIT School of Architecture and Planning, before returning to Japan to become professor at theTokyo University of the ArtsDepartment of Intermedia. She is a 1993Guggenheim Fellowand 2010Anonymous Was A Woman Awardwinner.  As of 1998,she resided inBoston.
Taho was born in 1950 inTokushima Prefecture.She was later educated atTokushima University(where she got her BA in 1973);Musashino Art University(where she got her BFA in 1977 and MFA in Design in 1979), andYale University(where she got her MFA in Sculpture in 1985).She was an artist-in-residence at theFine Arts Work Centerfrom 1985 to 1987, and she received several arts fellowships from theAsian Cultural Council(1986),Pollock-Krasner Foundation(1987), and the Massachusetts Artist Foundation (1991).
She worked as an art lecturer atHarvard Universityfrom 1987 to 1989, including at their Department of Visual and Environmental Studies;during her time there, she had an art project where her students would together adopt one chicken and then have it slaughtered and eaten and its bones turned into a sculpture.In 1987, an installation of hers was commissioned by theBrattleboro Museum and Art Centerfor their New Work Japan exhibition.In 1988, she set upForbidden Building, an installation where she invited others to collect dead leaves to fill a large structure ofchain-link fenceandscaffoldingnearbyRuggles station.She once worked withJeffrey Spaldingfor the 1989 installation workEye of Nature II.
In 1989, Taho moved to the Department of Architecture of the nearbyMIT School of Architecture and Planning, where she was assistant professor of visual arts and an Ida Green Career Development Professor.In 1991, she did an installation at theMassachusetts College of Art, namedOn the Path, where she "links her Japanese father's enslavement to theEmperorwith theslavery of the American South".In 1993, she was awarded aGuggenheim Fellowfor sculpting, as well as aBunting InstituteFellowship.
In 1994, her installationMulticultural Diplomats, where 40,000 inflatedmedical gloves, containing pieces of paper with the dreams of other people who wrote them down at her request, would be hung from theMargaret Mitchell House and Museum, was exhibited at the Arts Festival of Atlanta.On 17 September,Multicultural Diplomatswas destroyed, alongside a majority of the building, when an arsonist ignited a fire by spillingkeroseneacross all three floors above ground.Taho recalled that "We had 40,000 dreams on the roof. I think that kind of fire could be seen as an indication that dreams can come true. The fire eternalized the dreams. It is almost like a god tried to take their dreams".
In 1995, she was promoted to associate professor at MIT.Artforumsaid that her 1995 exhibitionDawn: Transformation of ZeroatCapp Street Project"examined our complex relationship with money".In 1996, she held an installation whereCambridgeresidents (reportedly includinghomeless people) would anonymously have their dreams engraved on herDream Towerssculpture, withThe Boston Globecalling her the city's "dream collector".In 2001, she organized an installation where pedestrians near anAmherstgarage would read poetry, including from Amherst nativeEmily Dickinson.She later moved to theTokyo University of the ArtsDepartment of Intermedia and became a professor there.She won anAnonymous Was A Woman Awardin 2000.