Tari Ito (1951–2021)

'Born Miwako Ito in Tokyo in 1951, Tari Ito was a performance art pioneer who traveled and performed extensively across Asia, Europe, and North America. She entered the department of arts at Tokyo’s Wako University in the early 1970s, around the time of the youth-led Zenkyoto protests against hierarchical social structures in 1968–70. She gradually became interested in performance, and in the third year of university, she enrolled in a course introduced in a theater magazine. She later became fascinated with pantomime and after her graduation in 1974, she continued to learn the techniques for seven to eight years. It was also during this period that she first acknowledged that she was a lesbian, and renamed herself Tari, after Thalia, the Greek muse for comedy and bucolic poetry whom she came across in a Jean Cocteau poem.'*

As part of Womanifesto I (1997), Ito performed her work Self Portrait (1996). In 1999, as part of Womanifesto II, Ito perfromed her work titled Me Being Me (1999).

*Pamela Young, Obituary: Tari Ito (1951–2021), Art Asia Pacific, https://artasiapacific.com/news/obituary-tari-ito-1951-2021, accessed 5 March 2025.