I think that Tabaimo’s work is successful because you cannot help being emotionally effected by it.  I think this is what she means when she says that the work is 50% her responsibility and 50% the viewer’s responsibility.  To me, it was really creepy, nightmarish, and weird. 

I see her point about the instability of her world in her work.  This is true even in the design of the building she designed.  Yes, it lets nature in.  But it is also a building with a hole in the roof and a hole in the floor.  Talk about instability.  And her idea that public toilet stalls can represent private internet communities (with a toilet that looks like a camera), and that a baby could be pulled from the nose of a woman and placed in the toilet—this is all pretty much horrifying to me. 

But there were also some things that I found very good.  The idea of a women making dinner, who just continues on as she listens to horrible stuff on the TV—isn’t that really how we all just continue living our lives while horrible things are happening around us?  I also liked the almost jerky old-fashioned look that her technique gives to the movement.  It looks a bit like a comic book.  The brains cooking on the stove reminded me of my brain during mid-terms.  And the way she used an area of glowing light with her hands (colored in orange and red) in a black pool also was very interesting.  Her description of the technique involved in producing this was fascinating—and it sounds very difficult.

Tabaimo certainly makes you feel something.  But I doubt that her stuff is hanging on anybody’s wall.  Still, I somehow can’t help but admire her art.