TT Takemoto is a queer Japanese American artist and scholar exploring Asian American history, sexuality, and identity. Their work delves into hidden dimensions of same-sex intimacy and trauma existing within Asian and Asian American archives.
Takemoto interacts with found footage and archival materials through performance and labor-intensive processes of painting, lifting, and manipulating 16mm/35mm film emulsion using clear tape, razor blades, and nail polish. By engaging with tactile and sensory dimensions of queer histories, Takemoto conjures up immersive fantasies involving butch surgeons and homoerotic breadmaking. Their work honors queer Asian Americans who lived, loved, and labored together during the prewar era and beyond.
Takemoto has exhibited and performed at Asian Art Museum, de Young Museum, Chinese Culture Center, Oakland Museum of California, Peabody Essex Museum, SOMArts, SFMOMA, Vargas Museum (Philippines) and Blindspot Gallery (Hong Kong). They have received grants from Art Matters, ArtPlace, Fleishhacker Foundation, Lucas Artists Program, and San Francisco Arts Commission.
Takemoto was awarded the Grand Jury Prize for Best Experimental Film at Slamdance Film Festival and Best Experimental Film Jury Award at Austin LGBTQ+ International Film Festival (aGLIFF). Their film screenings include Ann Arbor Film Festival, Anthology Film Archive, BFI Flare (London), CROSSROADS, Documenta 15, MIX Milano, MIX Mexico, Marseille Underground Film Festival, Outfest, Queer Forever! (Hanoi), Rio Gay Film Festival, Toronto Reel Asian Film Festival, TranScreen (Amsterdam), and Xposed International Queer Film Festival (Berlin).
Takemoto’s writings appear in Afterimage, Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas, Art Journal, Densho Encyclopedia, GLQ, Hyphen, Journal of Visual Culture, Millennium Film Journal, Performance Research, Radical Teacher, Theatre Survey, Women and Performance, and the anthologies Queering Asian American Art, Otherwise: Imagining Queer Feminist Art Histories, Saturation: Racial Matter, Institutional Limits, and the Excesses of Representation, and Thinking Through the Skin.
Over the past two decades, Takemoto has taught at California College of the Arts, where they served as dean of Humanities & Sciences (2018-2023). They were a member of the Queer Cultural Center’s Board of Directors (2008-2023) and co-founder of Queer Conversations on Culture and the Arts.
Catharine Clark Gallery presented Takemoto’s multimedia presentation alongside Wanxin Zhang’s solo exhibition in 2022. Takemoto lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.
