BuBu de la Madeleine

BuBu de la Madeleine began her artistic career in the early 1990s as an early member of the artist collective Dumb Type. She appeared in the group’s seminal performance S/N (1994–96), which toured 20 cities across 15 countries. Following this, she left Dumb Type to pursue a solo practice. Since then, she has created a wide-ranging body of work—encompassing performance, installation, text, and video—noted for its sharp criticality, poetic resonance, and wry sense of humor.

Alongside her artistic pursuits, BuBu has remained deeply engaged in civil activism, particularly around the health and human rights of people living with HIV/AIDS and sex workers. She also continues to perform in club settings as both a drag queen and king, contributing to queer nightlife culture.

Since 2004, BuBu has worked under the ongoing thematic project A Mermaid's Territory. For her, the mermaid symbolizes a figure that exists between two realms: the sea of the dead and the land of the living. The concept of “territory” represents the boundary between self and other. Considering the body as a form of personal territory, BuBu draws upon lived experiences—including sex work, family caregiving, and the surgical removal of her ovaries and uterus. These inquiries culminated in her 2022 installation A Mermaid’s Territory – Flags and Internal Organs, in which scales shed by a mermaid—having even released her internal organs—are transformed into a succession of flags that soar into the air, liberated from earthly constraints.

In addition to her solo practice, BuBu collaborated with feminist artist and art historian Yoshiko Shimada in 1998 to present the exhibition Made in Occupied Japan. Through drag and gender subversion, the artists examined how femininity and sexuality in postwar Japan were shaped under American occupation. This radical collaboration would later inform BuBu’s 2025 collage work Meiji Drag: Anti-Imperial Sugoroku, a bold and satirical reexamination of Japan’s modernization and imperial legacy. Their deconstructive approach has become a pioneering example of queer and feminist art practice in Japan.

Biography
1961　Born in Osaka, Japan
Graduated from Kyoto City University of Arts, Conceptual and Environmental Design Course
1992　Joined Dumb Type; performed in S/N (1994–96)

Selected Solo Exhibitions
2024　Pollen and Seeds, Ota Fine Arts 7CHOME, Tokyo
2022　Territory of the Mermaid — Flags and Organs, Ota Fine Arts
2004　Territory of the Mermaid, Ota Fine Arts
1998　Made in Occupied Japan (with Yoshiko Shimada), Ota Fine Arts

Selected Group Exhibitions
2025　Rooms Of Our Own, Ota Fine Arts, Shanghai
2025　Berlin Biennale: passing the fugitive on, Berlin
2025　Collection 2: Undo, Redo — I Untie, I Re-do, The National Museum of Art, Osaka
2024　Collection 2: The Body—Bodies, The National Museum of Art, Osaka
2019　JAPAN UNLIMITED, MuseumsQuartier Wien
2019　Ecologies of Expression, Arts Maebashi
1998　Donaiyanen!, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris

Public Collections
The National Museum of Art, Osaka
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

BuBu de la Madeleine

POLLEN AND SEEDS

Petite Grounds

Gallery Collection

A Mermaid’s Territory - Flags and Internal Organs