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Haruko Tanaka, “(Some Of) My Inheritance: Noni’s seamstress fold,” 2007, digital C-print, 22½ by 36¼, edition of five.

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CUPOLA BOBBER, HARUKO TANAKA WORKS EXHIBITING AT CUE w/1 cut

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NEW YORK CITY — CUE Art Foundation is presenting exhibitions by the performance group Cupola Bobber and Haruko Tanaka through March 10.

Mixing basic materials with homespun engineering, and bumbling wit, Chicago-based experimental performance group Cupola Bobber (artists Tyler Myers and Stephen Fiehn) thoughtfully tinker with reality by creating imagery that hangs between staged theatrics and the utterly familiar. Their playful, poignant, physically demanding performance often depict life as a series of quotidian exercises, interspersed with a desire for joy and connection to other beings, which ultimately leads to an eternal void.

As part of their exhibition, Myers and Fiehn will convert a portion of the gallery’s interior into a transition point for witnessing a star-filled universe through deceptively simple low-tech means, by creating a room defined by a cardboard ceiling and floor, in forced perspective, and occupied by a used drill, a ladder, and some toy cardboard bricks.

 Upon climbing the ladder, and placing an eye to the small hole cut into the cardboard ceiling, the viewer will see a very dim, starry night projected onto the inside surface of a box placed on top of the ceiling. This exhibition installment will be accompanied by a framed and wall-mounted, extremely lengthy letter written in very small handwriting by the occupant of the room, and addressed to the astronomers at the Mount Wilson Observatory.

Also, a series of approximately 200 2-by-2 inch black-profiled silhouette heads will be installed as a horizon line along three gallery walls. When viewed up close, drawings of symbols place within the empty space of the heads will form an elaborate show and tell of a conversation absurdly failing to create mutual understanding, thus chronicling how the incomprehensible may instantly feel profound, yet ultimately proves illusory.

California-based artist and activist Tanaka challenges the idea of fixed identity by exploring how cultural representation is largely a matter of negotiation in her current exhibition of video, photographs and site-specific sculpture installation. Having grown up in both England and Japan, and upon living in the United States for the least 13 years, her past work has sought to examine the lack of media portrayals of multicultural identity by investigating her place in the world. Her recent work readdresses this imbalance by reflecting how the world fits around her.

In the series of photographs on view titled “(Some of) My Inheritance,” the artist explores how cultural identity is inherited through the adoption of certain family rituals and passed on through daily interaction with others. Her choice of format for photographs such as “Mum’s triangle fold for grocery bags,” 2007 and “Noni’s seamstress fold,” 2007, further examines both the specificity and mutability of culture through the language of instruction.

The transmutability of gesture is also an important underlying theme in “1,000 triangles for some peace,” 2007, a suspended sculpture installation that uses her mother’s ritual fold for storing grocery bags to create a beautiful ceremonial object that encompasses both tradition and vision.

Themes of cultural exchange are further examined through the four installments that comprise the artist’s ongoing video series on view. In From Ahmeh to Zushi Station, 2004, the artist juxtaposes Japanese phrases, imagery and sounds, which appear in English alphabetical sequential order in a format akin to language instruction flash cards.

CUE Art Foundation is at 511 West 25th Street. For information, 212-206-3583 or www.cueartfoundation.org.