The Crow Museum of Asian Art is pleased to present a selection of Japanese bamboo art from the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation collection. Bamboo art, one of four major collecting areas of the Thoma Foundation, is derived from plants and continually reshaped and manipulated to push the boundaries of natural form. Featuring seventeen artists across twenty-two works including those of Living National Treasures Fujinuma Noboru and Fujitsuka Shosei, Twisted, Plaited, Sculpted showcases the vast breadth of woven bamboo as a medium.

A versatile material, bamboo and its prominent stalks can be found around the world. While considered a traditional and eco material, bamboo arts are forged by artists’ lifelong dedication and creative exploration of natural life. Through exemplars of Japanese bamboo art, this exhibition interrogates everyday materials of plants more routinely seen in gardens, crop fields, and local landscapes to reorient our understanding of how nature and art are intertwined.

Flying Dragon, 2012, Madake (Japanese timber bamboo), susutake (aged bamboo), rattan. Tanabe Kochikusai, Japanese, 1935–2021. Collection of the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation, L2026.6.1. Photo courtesy of the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation.

Materially, artists across Asia have transformed plants and other biological forms to create complex sculptures. Mumbai-based artist Shakuntala Kulkarni has turned to the plant species of palm, more commonly known as cane, which is often conflated with bamboo. Through her material study, Kulkarni analyzes public and private urban spaces that are marked by issues of gender. For Kulkarni and like many of the artists in the Thoma Foundation collection, nature cannot be divorced from our contemporary and urban lives.  

A formal and thematic meditation on plants, including bamboo and cane, is deeply present throughout these sculptures, which range from human figures to abstract shapes to dream-like basketry. Within these sculptures, sourced from Japan to India, artists meticulously craft the fragility and resilience of plants.  

For more information please visit the Crow Museum of Asian Art website.

Tagged 09/11.