The Snow Monkeys of Texas: Do snow monkeys remember snow mountains?

2016
Shimabuku

HD video, color, sound, vinyl wall text, cactus pots
Duration: 20 min.

After a first difficult year, the “snow monkeys” gradually acclimatised to their new natural environment, with its local fauna and flora, which the artist was able to observe first-hand in 2016. During this visit, he carried out an experiment to find out if these uprooted primates, which were now Americanised and lived in a desert region alongside other wild animals, and ate cactus flowers, remembered snow, by placing a heap of crushed ice in their midst. The curious monkeys approach the ice, touching and tasting it, initially with caution, then with confidence, possibly reminiscing on their lost past. With this simple action, the artist questions the memory and ability of living species to adapt to their environment.

Hangs

In tune with the world

From 11 April 2018 to 27 August 2018

Shimabuku initially wanted to be a poet, then a tourist guide. He graduated from Osaka College of Art and the San Francisco Art Institute, and developed an approach based on a deep and continuous empathy with his environment. Shimabuku’s first solo show was held at the Dia Center for the Arts in New York. He has taken part in many group shows around the world. He made a standout contribution to the 2017 Venice Biennale with The Snow Monkeys of Texas: Do snow monkeys remember snow mountains?.

Shimabuku initially wanted to be a poet, then a tourist guide. He graduated from Osaka College of Art and the San Francisco Art Institute, and developed an approach based on a deep and continuous empathy with his environment. Since the 1990s, the artist has explored and travelled the world, listening to its rumblings and vibrations, which are reflected in his protean work. His installations, sculptures, drawings, writings, photographs, videos and performances, combined or produced separately, originate in encounters, stories and anecdotes relating to interactions with living things – people, animals, plants – and the mineral world. Unexpected, sometimes absurd, but always tinged with humour and poetry, his interventions create new situations characterised by simple actions and events based on great economy of means, which engage his participation or that of others, and are documented by the artist through text and image, either fixed or animated.