"Transpacific Borderlands" Artist Profiles

Published: Sept. 19, 2017 Modified: April 11, 2025

Album

Taro Zorrilla

Born 1980 in Mexico City, Mexico; lives and works in Mexico City

Taro Zorrilla has degrees in architecture from Waseda University in Japan and Autonomous University of Mexico. He was included in the Mexican Pavilion of the first Lisbon Architecture Triennial in 2007, and he designed the cultural center of the Japanese Embassy in Mexico in 2010. In 2011, he received a grant from the Pola Art Foundation. Recently, he has shown work at the Festival Internacional Cervantino in Mexico (2014) and at the Taro Okamoto Museum in Japan (2015). Zorrilla’s work explores community behavior and conscience; gathering together the values, knowledge, and dreams of the members of a group, his work recreates or reflects the community ideal. He has focused on multicultural and multinational communities, particularly in relation to human migration habits.
--
ARTIST PROFILE:

Born 1980 in Mexico City, Mexico; lives and works in Mexico City

TRANSCRIPTION:

My mother is the one who came to Mexico. She came here by herself from Japan and immigrated to Mexico. However, because of circumstances in my family–the fact that my father died when I was very young–So basically, in our day-to-day lives us kids were by ourselves. But with an education that was very Japanese. After I finished the education phase, I have always felt Mexican-Japanese.

There are four parts to my work. The first is my artistic work which is basically video and media and also models or drawings. The second is architecture, and my architectural perspective has helped a lot in my artistic work as well. The other part is architecture which is in the service of the community or public. We see a particular space or social situation where we believe that architecture can contribute something. And the fourth is activities with a civil group that is called “Fundación Paisaje Social” where we have activities--mainly art workshops. So you can’t assume, “OK, I’m an architect so I do this or as an artist I do this.” The curiosities or concerns continue to emerge, when I’m thinking about how I can contribute to the current situation.

Depending on how people see me, they want to box me in as an architect or artist or Mexican-Japanese or Japanese-Mexican, but this depends on how others view me. But anyways…in artistic work, when you call them that, or architectural work--I’m constantly in a state of mutation or immigration. In this case, the work that I am showing is a community’s story of Mexican immigrants who go to the US and build their houses in Mexico. What always motivates me is when I encounter these “behaviors.” “Behaviors” are when a group of people that don’t know each other do the same thing or have the same gestures. In this case, the immigrants are constructing houses across Mexico. So my interest is in a kind of behavior that motivates people to carry out some action because of their feelings.

The part of how a community forms through that process is what really interests me. Especially, when people move and live somewhere else--the culture and customs that that person brings get mixed with the culture and customs of the new place where s/he has migrated--that’s this project’s main theme.

* * * * *

Transpacific Borderlands: The Art of Japanese Diaspora in Lima, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and São Paulo is on view at the Japanese American National Museum from September 17, 2017 - February 25, 2018. The exhibition examines the experiences of artists of Japanese ancestry born, raised, or living in either Latin America or predominantly Latin American neighborhoods of Southern California. Taro Zorrilla is one of the artists featured in this exhibition.

For more information about the exhibition, visit janm.org/transpacific-borderlands.

Japanese American National Museum
100 N. Central Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90012
janm.org

*The exhibition is part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a Getty-led initiative exploring Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles, and is made possible through grants from the Getty Foundation. The presenting sponsor of PST: LA/LA is Bank of America.

Eduardo Tokeshi

Born 1960 in Lima, Peru; lives and works in Lima.

Eduardo Tokeshi is a graduate of the Faculty of Art of Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú in Lima. His work, which has been exhibited throughout Latin America, combines colonial and modern imagery to reflect on identity and belonging. Tokeshi’s exhibitions in Lima have included Associated Animals (Gallery Forum, 2016); Magic Mountain (Gallery Forum, 2015); The Grand Drawing (Ricardo Palma Cultural Center, 2015); and Tokeshi: Retrospective 1984–2012 (Gallery Germán Krüger, 2012). He has represented Peru in multiple cultural events abroad, such as the Bienal de São Paulo and the Havana Biennial.
--
ARTIST PROFILE:

Born 1960 in Lima, Peru; lives and works in Lima.

TRANSCRIPTION:

An old 1960s poet, César Calvo, said that poetry was like a blind man’s cane. For me, painting is the same. This cane doesn’t allow you to fall, but many times you don’t see the path. You intuit it– believe it’s like that. When you really see the path, it’s something else. Living between two cultures, gives you the friction necessary to create art.

There are flags that only make sense to me. There are flags that I made for the pleasure of taking advantage of letting go. But what I do know is that every flag responds to the moment.

That flag– I would never be able to repeat it. I would never think of making something like that that I made at that moment.

Dictatorships create great artists, create great movements, create great ideas. Because one is working under pressure. One is working...at the edge of silence.

In a nuclear family ruled by silence, where no one says anything or expresses anything, where no one expresses they love you or that you are wanted. But rather, there is only a silence that says, “Accept what you are. Accept us, your parents, as we are. And love, well, we’re always there for you, but don’t expect us to say that.”

Our parents have this thing, this code of silence, where you have to sense their love. Because they were raised this way, in fact, probably in a way, much more extreme. In this Japanese community where order hard work, honor and dignity are major words–big words, that are like a mountain so that even I, at times, am afraid to face, many times for fear of disappointing my parents. That idea sometimes chases me–this code that’s been imposed on us.

Many of our generation saw that we could leave, escape from this. And that we could take on, dedicate ourselves to something else. Because there is an enormous number of these painters who have pursued this work because, I believe, this reason. One wants to communicate. Because there’s an emptiness. You want to communicate or express so others understand, if not through you, through a painting, a film or a poem.

* * * * *

Transpacific Borderlands: The Art of Japanese Diaspora in Lima, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and São Paulo is on view at the Japanese American National Museum from September 17, 2017 - February 25, 2018. The exhibition examines the experiences of artists of Japanese ancestry born, raised, or living in either Latin America or predominantly Latin American neighborhoods of Southern California. Eduardo Tokeshi is one of the artists featured in this exhibition.

For more information about the exhibition, visit janm.org/transpacific-borderlands.

Japanese American National Museum
100 N. Central Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90012
janm.org

Shinpei Takeda

Born 1978 in Osaka, Japan; lives and works in Tijuana, Mexico, and Düsseldorf, Germany

The works of visual artist and filmmaker Shinpei Takeda involve a wide range of themes regarding memory and history; he uses multimedia installations, sound interventions, documentary films, large-scale photography installations, and collaborative community projects in a variety of public contexts. His documentary films have dealt with such diverse topics as pre-World War II Japanese immigration to Tijuana, Mexico, and atomic bomb survivors living in the Americas. His visual art projects have included an outdoor urban photo montage created in collaboration with the local community. Takeda is founder and creative director of the AjA Project, a nonprofit dedicated to working with resettled refugee children in San Diego and displaced youth in Colombia and Thailand using participatory photography.
--
ARTIST PROFILE:

Born 1978 in Osaka, Japan; lives and works in Tijuana, Mexico, and Düsseldorf, Germany

TRANSCRIPTION:

My name is Shinpei Takeda and I'm an artist. I'm from Japan I grew up in Germany from 1985 to 1990 because of my father’s job. I want to be able to say my job is to be Shimpei Takeda. That’s just what I’m trying to do, what I feel I need to do. And certain context requires certain different skills sets of mine.

You know, from in Mexico I am doing a lot more visual artwork. In Germany I’m editing a lot more—I wrote a book in Germany. There’s different parts of these places that I associate with. They are all in me, you know.

I’m proposing a Roach Motel Installation, which is a scaffolding in which I will be on the first floor. It will be three (floors). It's a tower and one tunnel, and we call it Roach Trap so that this is me like a little trap and there would be a lot of noise down there and then you have a few other sections in which we will be there and then we will be playing music. It’s kind of a “noise punkformance unit” that has two American musicians and two Mexican artists and me and we’ve been doing this type of “punkformance music” but performance punk project for the last the last 10 years or so.

I’m still diasporing, you know. I'm trying to find out moving here moving there and then by moving from one place to another, something becomes very clear about this place that you left.

There was a city just outside of the Oaxaca there is a small town called Teotitlan del Valle where there were 5,000 people there were all weaving and weaving is all about time, it's about - it’s like a printing machine, you just slowly – it’s about graining time into this thread.

So I thought it was an interesting metaphor. So I used this baseline of the tapetes as a canvas and I started painting on them. And this piece called Beta Decay 3 is called Timeline of our Memory. That one has a lot of writings in Zapotecos but they don’t have an alphabet. So I wrote it in Japanese in katakana.

My intent to show my process of how do you stop if each thread is individual’s lives and stories, how do we pay attention and how do do we listen to these people's stories.

* * * * *

Transpacific Borderlands: The Art of Japanese Diaspora in Lima, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and São Paulo is on view at the Japanese American National Museum from September 17, 2017 - February 25, 2018. The exhibition examines the experiences of artists of Japanese ancestry born, raised, or living in either Latin America or predominantly Latin American neighborhoods of Southern California. Shinpei Takeda is one of the artists featured in this exhibition.

For more information about the exhibition, visit janm.org/transpacific-borderlands.

Japanese American National Museum
100 N. Central Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90012
janm.org

Kenzi Shiokava

Born 1938 in São Paulo, Brazil; lives and works in Los Angeles

Kenzi Shiokava arrived in Los Angeles in 1964, receiving a bachelor’s degree from Chouinard Art Institute (now California Institute of the Arts) in 1972 and a master’s degree from Otis Art Institute (now Otis College of Art and Design) in 1974. He was heavily influenced by the work of his art school peers, who included such noted assemblage artists as John Outterbridge, Noah Purifoy, and Betye Saar. His work, which revolves around wood carving and assemblage, embodies a cultural hybridity that can be seen in his wood and macramé totems, which represent, respectively, his Japanese and Brazilian sides. Shiokava received the Mohn Award for public recognition for his participation in the Hammer Museum’s Made in LA 2016: a, the, though, only. He passed away on June 18, 2021.
--
ARTIST PROFILE:

Born 1938 in São Paulo, Brazil; lives and works in Los Angeles

TRANSCRIPTION:

My name is Kenzi Shiokava and I was born in Brazil. I came in 1964...a long time ago.

Definitely, I'm Brazilian Japanese. You know the way I think--I think like a Brazilian. But, my psyche is pure Japanese.

You know, I went to school here...I developed myself as an artist here. What I am doing, it has to move people. It has to inspire other people. If I do something--really that would come from my guts...My whatever--inside of me, you know... I would be very, very happy.

I like, you know, the natural...natural material...that's the wood, or from plants. And so easily available. Because my major thing is carving wood. Even that--when I get the material, it already has history.

Forty years, fifty years, I work... Because I believe...what I'm doing, you know. To do art is my work, you know...it has an urgency. It's not just, if I want to or not. It's a necessity, you know. Now I enjoy to be here, in my studio just enjoying the moments...because I'm enjoying the self.

I'm so grateful that I'm getting older. You know, all the process... The more you live, the more you learn.

* * * * *

Transpacific Borderlands: The Art of Japanese Diaspora in Lima, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and São Paulo is on view at the Japanese American National Museum from September 17, 2017 - February 25, 2018. The exhibition examines the experiences of artists of Japanese ancestry born, raised, or living in either Latin America or predominantly Latin American neighborhoods of Southern California. Kenzi Shiokava is one of the artists featured in this exhibition.

For more information about the exhibition, visit janm.org/transpacific-borderlands.

Japanese American National Museum
100 N. Central Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90012
janm.org

Shizu Saldamando

Born 1978 in San Francisco; lives and works in Los Angeles

Shizu Saldamando was born and raised in San Francisco’s Mission District. She received her BA from UCLA’s School of Arts and Architecture in 2000 and her MFA from California Institute of the Arts in 2005. She has exhibited her work in both painting and experimental media contexts; notable group exhibitions include Portraits of the Encounter (Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, 2011); Audience as Subject (Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 2010); Drawing the Line (Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, 2008); Phantom Sightings (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2008); and AIR RAIDS: Freewaves’ Seventh Festival of New Media Art (Los Angeles, 2000). Saldamando is one of the co-founders of the Los Angeles artist-run cooperative Monte Vista Projects.
--
ARTIST PROFILES:

Born 1978 in San Francisco; lives and works in Los Angeles

TRANSCRIPTION:

I think most of my work is... I view them as homages pieces to friends and family and I had done a lot of portraits of people and friends hanging out. It seems to be the same reoccurring themes of friends that are inhabiting these subcultural social spaces.

I was asking some of my friends about these sort of gothic lunchboxes that I remember having when I was a young person, I think in high school. And they were these little lunchboxes that you put your stickers of different bands as a way to show your affiliation or what you liked. I remember these and I guess as I’m getting older remembering it kind of being nostalgic a little bit, so I was asking some of my friends and they still had their lunchboxes. And I thought it would be great to document it: kind of harkening back to a specific era maybe the early 90s late 80s. And each sticker kind of has it’s own content or context attached to it as well. So there’s a story within each drawing. So it’s kind of like a portrait of them through their lunchboxes.

Tattooing was a way to make money and to support my art practice I think and it’s been really great and it’s actually brought me back to what I originally was really inspired by as an artist: it’s talking to people connecting with people finding their stories and the tattoo is kind of like this collaborative piece between me and the person who’s getting it. And we discuss where it goes on the body, what it means for the person, and it’s this really nice kind of way to share that experience, and it’s very cathartic and therapeutic and spiritual in a lot of ways. It’s a really nice balance between the studio and here where I’m alone and drawing. In there I have this dialogue with somebody as I’m creating, and it’s become a really amazing day job to have and really positively influencing a lot of my art practice.

See for me, culture is so varied and not necessarily this one monolithic idea of Japanese American identity, and this one monolithic Chicano identity. Because each one is so varied and different, and each experience is so varied and not going to be the same from another person’s, so it’s hard for me to specify this is definitely this specific culture I’m referencing here because each culture on it’s own is influenced by so many different cultures as well.

I think in my work, that dialogue always exists, but I’m not necessarily trying to flesh it out or make sense of it, because I think it is so complex and so varied that it would almost be impossible to.

* * * * *

Transpacific Borderlands: The Art of Japanese Diaspora in Lima, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and São Paulo is on view at the Japanese American National Museum from September 17, 2017 - February 25, 2018. The exhibition examines the experiences of artists of Japanese ancestry born, raised, or living in either Latin America or predominantly Latin American neighborhoods of Southern California. Shizu Saldamando is one of the artists featured in this exhibition.

For more information about the exhibition, visit janm.org/transpacific-borderlands.

Japanese American National Museum
100 N. Central Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90012
janm.org

Yuriko Rojas Moriyama

Born 1981 in Mexico City, Mexico; lives in Mexico City and works in Toluca de Lerdo, Mexico

Yuriko Rojas Moriyama graduated from the School of Art at the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico (UAEM), where she also obtained a master’s degree in visual studies. She teaches visual arts and has worked as an academic, museographer, designer, and artist. As part of a commemoration of 120 years of collaboration between Mexico and Japan, Rojas Moriyama’s artwork was featured in the exhibition Selenite Garden (Franz Mayer Museum, Mexico City, 2017). Her art also received honorable mentions at the Annual Salon of the School of Art (2002, 2003) and twice placed second in the University Biennale of Visual Art (2003, 2004). Rojas Moriyama has been curating and designing exhibitions with Mexican and international artists since 2007; her projects have included Intervenciones at the School of Art, which featured in situ works by young local artists. She has served on the committee of the University Biennale of Visual Art since 2005.
--
ARTIST PROFILE:

Born 1981 in Mexico City, Mexico; lives in Mexico City and works in Toluca de Lerdo, Mexico

TRANSCRIPTION:

For me, art making is based in life itself. That's why I think my work has the very strong burden of self-references. But I believe that art is vital for its power to mobilize through an idea that becomes an image, touching and mobilizing another subject.

I began making self-portraits--the self-portrait implies not the unfolding of a person's image but rather thinking about oneself. So I started by looking for something, but it didn't have a form. This was my initial training. Now, I'm very clear that all my work is based on an experience of life and that in a way t's like a response--like the imprint of one's existence. But I'm interested today in work with others. I'm not so interested that my work is so autobiographical or self-referential. Rather, I have become interested in opening these codes so that other subjects can insert themselves and read them, along with me so that it doesn't have to be their own experience but theirs summed up by an image.

Art as a form of knowledge implies that the final result is an object or in a form that is lasting, but art has no definition nor is it abstract. For me, art is made out of this material that's alive.

I'm lucky that I worked in Mexico because immigration meant suvival. My grandparents were from Hiroshima, arriving without knowing what was to come. Then came another generation later. I was born in Mexico and am rooted in this culture, but my family has immigrated again. My mother and sister moved to the US. So these experiences like of displacement are interestingly very marked between Mexico, the US and Japan, which are the parts of this project.

My work does not try to be specific or placed only in the Japanese experience or community. Rather through this experience, I hope to expand thinking about immigration as a phenomenon that's global and complex.

* * * * *

Transpacific Borderlands: The Art of Japanese Diaspora in Lima, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and São Paulo is on view at the Japanese American National Museum from September 17, 2017 - February 25, 2018. The exhibition examines the experiences of artists of Japanese ancestry born, raised, or living in either Latin America or predominantly Latin American neighborhoods of Southern California. Yuriko Rojas Moriyama is one of the artists featured in this exhibition.

For more information about the exhibition, visit janm.org/transpacific-borderlands.

Japanese American National Museum
100 N. Central Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90012
janm.org

Kiyoto Ota

Born 1948 in Nagasaki, Japan; lives and works in Mexico City

Kiyoto Ota studied at the School of Democratic Japan Art, Japanese Art Association, and Mexico’s National School of Painting, Sculpture, and Engraving (“La Esmeralda”). At the latter, he also served as professor of sculpture. He later received a master’s degree in sculpture at the National School of Plastic Arts (ENAP) in San Carlos, where he has taught stone carving since 2006. Ota has won several awards for his art and has been a fellow at such institutions as Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte.
--
ARTIST PROFILE:

Born 1948 in Nagasaki, Japan; lives and works in Mexico City

TRANSCRIPTION:

My name is Kiyoto Ota. I am... well, a sculptor.

One of my friends was kind of like a hippie, and he talked about Mexican art, in particular things like muralismo. After listening to stories about Mexican earth and land or land patterns, humanity and things like that, I felt a kind of longing for something like that in Mexico, and because there was nothing like it in Japan, I had a longing for Mexico.

Well, I joke that I've forgotten quite a bit of Japanese, and I feel like I can't speak Spanish well, and of course there are times when I don't know what I am but I do think I am Japanese inside.

I came here when I was 23, and being 23 I suppose I was already marked by Japanese culture, so I guess I am Japanese after all.

When I make my work, even though I don't make my work being conscious that I am Japanese, I guess it ends up coming out. After all, I can't deny it, and I do think that the way I think about things and my intuition is probably Japanese. I do think [this appears in my work] I think it is unconsciously within me. After all, I am Japanese, and I think there is a certain influence of so-called Japanese culture.

Well, I feel it is actually getting stronger as I get older. When I was young I wasn't very conscious of it, I feel like I was free of that influence, but as I gradually get older, in the end I feel that the influence of Japanese culture on myself is getting stronger day by day.

Through sculpture and through its manners of production I made a work that allows one to experience healing space.

That is the Uterus series. From the beginning I was after all interested in the interior space of sculpture “Nido,” exactly as the name suggests, is one of the uteri, and it floats in the air like a uterus. Something can actually enter inside it. Therefore, a sense of stability is created in the spirit.

I have not studied Zen a lot, After all, there are always cultural environments that affect the ways we think, and of course I was unconscious of that while I was still in Japan, but recently in particular when I take a step back I actually feel there is a considerable influence from Zen inside me after all.

I think through the internal space in the Uterus Series experiencing healing by not just the eyes but by feeling in the body was the goal of the series.

* * * * *

Transpacific Borderlands: The Art of Japanese Diaspora in Lima, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and São Paulo is on view at the Japanese American National Museum from September 17, 2017 - February 25, 2018. The exhibition examines the experiences of artists of Japanese ancestry born, raised, or living in either Latin America or predominantly Latin American neighborhoods of Southern California. Kiyoto Ota is one of the artists featured in this exhibition.

For more information about the exhibition, visit janm.org/transpacific-borderlands.

Japanese American National Museum
100 N. Central Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90012
janm.org

Oscar Oiwa

Born 1965 in São Paulo, Brazil; lives and works in New York

After graduating from São Paulo University’s College of Architecture and Urbanism, Oscar Oiwa was featured in the São Paulo Arts Biennial. He then moved to Japan, where he lived for 11 years. Now one of the most internationally acclaimed Nipo-Brazilian artists, Oiwa has exhibited in over 20 different countries and sees himself as a citizen of the world. His work has been collected by such institutions as the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; and the Phoenix Museum of Art in Arizona.
--
ARTIST PROFILE:

Born 1965 in São Paulo, Brazil; lives and works in New York

TRANSCRIPTION:

My name is Oscar Oiwa and I was born in São Paulo in 1965. When I was very small my family speak Japanese inside my house and then we have TV, comics, friends maybe start speaking Portuguese but I was very child in this condition and for me it was very natural speaking two different languages.

One of the reason why I moved to the US, to New York in 2001 was because I want to make big art works, big paintings, and in Japan that’s a little bit difficult because we don’t have space we don’t have art market for big painting.

I think my works have many influences of many different places including contemporary media like movies. I grew up looking at Brazilian Art History booksmand only my adult life I gone to Japan I travel along Asia. I felt like the movies, they're like my paintings, like very big movie screen that has a very cinematographic landscape and then the people can live inside of there. That's why I like to paint in big sizes.

This is one painting about Japan. The original image comes from a hotel in Gifu. I had exhibition in countryside of Japan, then I stay in hotel and the backside of the hotel has a real nice commercial street that everywhere is flat, but this kind of shopping mall now in Japan is almost dead because they build modern shopping centers.

Other problem in countryside Japan is the population decrease because the younger generation goes to study in Tokyo, so like in big cities and the young generation stay in the capitals, start work in big cities and the countryside is almost abandoned.

Everyday I wake up, I eat something, going to go to my job. Usually I am a very quiet person but I have good eyes to look at the world, to think about the world…It’s a nice job because we can travel a lot, we can have more time to think about the life.

* * * * *

Transpacific Borderlands: The Art of Japanese Diaspora in Lima, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and São Paulo is on view at the Japanese American National Museum from September 17, 2017 - February 25, 2018. The exhibition examines the experiences of artists of Japanese ancestry born, raised, or living in either Latin America or predominantly Latin American neighborhoods of Southern California. Oscar Oiwa is one of the artists featured in this exhibition.

For more information about the exhibition, visit janm.org/transpacific-borderlands.

Japanese American National Museum
100 N. Central Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90012
janm.org

Sandra Nakamura

Born 1981 in Lima, Peru; lives and works in Lima

Working with everyday materials and situations, Sandra Nakamura creates temporary, site-specific interventions in which she seeks to actively engage the public in sociopolitical investigations. She has done projects for Centro Abierto, Peru; Biennial of the Americas, Denver, Colorado; CCA Wattis Institute, San Francisco; and Cuenca Biennial, Ecuador. She has received several grants, including a 2016 award from the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO) in the Emerging Artists category, and has been an artist-in-residence at the Basque Center-Museum of Contemporary Art, Spain; Community Museum Project, Hong Kong; and Center for Contemporary Art Kitakyushu, Japan. Nakamura holds an MFA from the Bauhaus Universität Weimar, Germany.
--
ARTIST PROFILE:

Born 1981 in Lima, Peru; lives and works in Lima

TRANSCRIPTION:

I believe that a lot of my work is informed by my experience traveling and by the experience of feeling slightly displaced, but in a constant manner. For example, here, I have never really felt Peruvian–completely Peruvian.

I went to study in the US when I was 17 to a place where I wasn’t familiar, where I had to learn the language. So I felt somewhat apart. Afterwards I went to Germany, then I spent time in Japan. Then after 12 years of traveling and living abroad, I came back to Perú to work here for the first time. And my house at that time did not feel right for working. So I think that’s where this idea to investigate spaces– its relationships or links, emotional or contextual that we have with spaces, people, places.

The work always has some type of relation with the place or the context where it will be shown. Generally, I research the place first–the place, its history, the conditions of the space. Then based on what I have found, I focus on a specific aspect. And the material, physical or formal part comes from what I discover in my research.

How do we form emotional links with a space, questions of collective memory also–because sometimes one might be close to a space because of something personal or because of experiences or family, but also at the same time, sharing some kind of link through community.

I believe that this identity or relation with Japan is apparent in one way or another through my treatment of materials. For example, I use a lot of white, monochromatic, more minimalist. I don’t know if these are things that I learned from Japan or from my home or from my grandparents or by how these are organized in your house or space–I’ve never been able to identify precisely where this aesthetic comes from.

Emptiness, absence, and displacement are important to my research. And on the other hand, this issue of white and of a space that’s not crammed with objects, things and colors–almost like a space of contemplation.

* * * * *

Transpacific Borderlands: The Art of Japanese Diaspora in Lima, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and São Paulo is on view at the Japanese American National Museum from September 17, 2017 - February 25, 2018. The exhibition examines the experiences of artists of Japanese ancestry born, raised, or living in either Latin America or predominantly Latin American neighborhoods of Southern California. Sandra Nakamura is one of the artists featured in this exhibition.

For more information about the exhibition, visit janm.org/transpacific-borderlands.

Japanese American National Museum
100 N. Central Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90012
janm.org

Erica Kaminishi

Born 1979 in Mato Grosso, Brazil; lives and works in Les Pavillons-sous-Bois, France.

Erica Kaminishi lived in Japan for ten years, where she worked, studied pottery, and attended a PhD program. She has worked as an artist in Japan and Brazil and was featured in the 2010 Aichi Triennale and the 2012 Echigo Tsumari Art Triennale. Her artwork combines Japanese cultural elements—such as gardens and nihonga (traditional Japanese painting)—with Portuguese language works, such as Fernando Pessoa’s poetry. Kaminishi holds a master’s degree from Nihon University.
--
ARTIST PROFILE:

Born 1979 in Mato Grosso, Brazil; lives and works in Les Pavillons-sous-Bois, France.

TRANSCRIPTION:

My family history has been marked by change, by immigration, not a fixed place. And my grandparents are of Japanese origin from the North of Japan, my parents are second generation born in Brazil, and I was born in the interior of Mato Grosso.

When I was 18 years old I went to Japan for the first time. I started researching and studying about traditional Japanese art. I identified myself with the whole movement. I re-work many elements of the Japanese Baroque period, the beginning of the EDO era.

I participated in a Arts-in-Residency program at the biology department at Waseda University. It was very enriching, it was the first time that I worked with elements, for example, the petri dish, test tubes and I also introduced it in my work. I thought of art as a way to channel all experiences, everything that I was experiencing at the moment.

The written language was very important for me in this period. I wrote several diaries, the diaries began to turn into drawings and it was from this point that I began to work the word as visual composition. Basically I work with drawing, so paper is my limit.

I like to go beyond the limits of the paper and develop my work in other media, methods, this is a great challenge, to think in large scale. To think about an artwork where the conceptual side, the aesthetic side, and the technical side, engage in an harmonious dialogue.

* * * * *

Transpacific Borderlands: The Art of Japanese Diaspora in Lima, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and São Paulo is on view at the Japanese American National Museum from September 17, 2017 - February 25, 2018. The exhibition examines the experiences of artists of Japanese ancestry born, raised, or living in either Latin America or predominantly Latin American neighborhoods of Southern California. Erica Kaminishi is one of the artists featured in this exhibition.

For more information about the exhibition, visit janm.org/transpacific-borderlands.

Japanese American National Museum
100 N. Central Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90012
janm.org

Ichiro Irie

Born 1969 in Tokyo, Japan; lives and works in Los Angeles.

Ichiro Irie has exhibited his work internationally in galleries and museums in Los Angeles, New York, Mexico City, Tokyo, London, Warsaw, Frankfurt, Holland, Buenos Aires, Hong Kong, and Singapore. As a curator, he has organized over 40 exhibitions at venues such as 18th Street Arts Center and Raid Projects in Los Angeles; Art & Idea and MUCA Roma in Mexico City; Campbell Works in London; Videor Art Foundation in Frankfurt; and Kyubidou Gallery in Tokyo. He is the founder and editor of the contemporary art magazine RiM, active from 2002 to 2007. He has been the owner and director of the popular artist-run space JAUS in Los Angeles since 2009, and is an artist-in-residence at 18th Street Arts Center. Irie holds an MFA from Claremont Graduate University in California.
--
ARTIST PROFILES:

Born 1969 in Tokyo, Japan; lives and works in Los Angeles.

TRANSCRIPTION:

Just the nature of my work is very multi-disciplinary. I run a space called “Jaus” in West Los Angeles and I make my own work and organize exhibitions as well. And even within my work, my work ranges from very traditional painting to found object sculpture to video to performance.

I grew up here in the states but I didn't become a citizen until only a few years ago and everything. Since I've become a citizen, I’ve become more cautious of what it means to be American.

When I was younger and right out of grad school, I thought of the idea of being in something that's so culturally oriented. It was a very very problematic. Just to say, that's what they do and that's what we do to lump it all together is very dangerous. I didn't know if I wanted to just be seen as "Oh yeah, that Japanese American guy." The context is always really, really, important. Certain exhibitions that intelligently deal with this issue of identity. If it's done well, I think it's and with awareness of these issues, I think it could be great.

I made a series about the Japanese action hero Ultraman also based on Richter's 48 portraits. They were a bunch of portraits of Ultraman. Something about the design reminded me of the sunglass lenses as well. I like this idea of this cracking and fracturing and this idea of putting it all back together kind of like it’s this Sisyphean, very labor-intensive inefficient task to create something that's ultimately broken and I see some kind of beauty in that. And then I ran across this mannequin, so I had this crazy idea of what if I cover this whole mannequin with it?

Even before I started art school, I've been immersed in this artist culture and DIY culture.

My magazine, I think, was an attempt, in a very small, limited way to create more dialogue between those two communities. Seeing where those limits are in terms of what people, recognize as cultural products but also where those limits are, in terms of what's allowed or what's accepted and seeing where those gray areas are and trying not to really go past the gray areas, and being playful within them.

* * * * *

Transpacific Borderlands: The Art of Japanese Diaspora in Lima, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and São Paulo is on view at the Japanese American National Museum from September 17, 2017 - February 25, 2018. The exhibition examines the experiences of artists of Japanese ancestry born, raised, or living in either Latin America or predominantly Latin American neighborhoods of Southern California. Ichiro Irie is one of the artists featured in this exhibition.

For more information about the exhibition, visit janm.org/transpacific-borderlands.

Japanese American National Museum
100 N. Central Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90012
janm.org

Patssy Higuchi

Born 1972 in Lima, Peru; lives and works in Lima.

Patssy Higuchi grew up in a family of artists, learning how to paint from her father and how to throw pottery from her mother. She studied drawing and painting for six years at the National School of Fine Arts of Peru—the same school where her parents met. In 1993, she met her future husband, the Cuban artist A. Alexix García; that same year, the two of them founded Cauri Taller de Gráfica Experimental, a print workshop for artists. The couple briefly lived in Havana, Cuba, where Higuchi was a guest artist at the Experimental Graphic Workshop, before returning to Peru.
--
ARTIST PROFILE:

Born 1972 in Lima, Peru; lives and works in Lima.

TRANSCRIPTION:

Look, I have round eyes and hair like this.

Interviewer: You don't look very Nikkei.

No. This was always very difficult for me since I was a child. That someone recognize me as part of the Nikkei community makes me feel like I belong. This is funny because I always had this contradiction with myself since childhood. And part of my work has been to negate this because in appearance that's not me, but it's also why I've felt like it was important—belonging was very important.

My immediate environment, my family, and what occurs in my life, is what principally feeds my work. I won't say that the political and social climate don't affect me, because, yes, they influence and impact, but my work always starts with what happens to me in the moment that I'm in.

At the beginning, I was very concerned with everything that had to do with my body because of what was happening to me in this moment. I began to question myself and why women have to conform to all of these controls over their bodies, and I began to be concerned a lot with everything to do with the formation of a woman's identity. I began to focus on printmaking, mass media and all that.

I left to live abroad, but this theme of women was always recurrent. I came back to live here, and I got pregnant again. This was my third child, and she was a girl. And suddenly, my daughter became like the motor to initiate a new way of seeing what I had been doing. Suddenly, I could see myself in her. So this brought me a set of questions about my mother and myself. Since my mother spent a lot of time with us—my three sisters—I learned to knit, to embroider and to sew. I have always worked with my hands, and in my work, at school, I spent a lot of time painting, but I also made ceramics and, later, engravings.

The process of lithography was what first grabbed my attention because there is this mold that is hard, rigid—that's a rock—that you work on and afterwards use a chemical process to make the image. I don't know why there's this relationship of something rigid and hard that reproduces a print. Starting there, I followed that. And I continued with a line of work that I have carried on from then.

* * * * *

Transpacific Borderlands: The Art of Japanese Diaspora in Lima, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and São Paulo is on view at the Japanese American National Museum from September 17, 2017 - February 25, 2018. The exhibition examines the experiences of artists of Japanese ancestry born, raised, or living in either Latin America or predominantly Latin American neighborhoods of Southern California. Patssy Higuchi is one of the artists featured in this exhibition.

For more information about the exhibition, visit janm.org/transpacific-borderlands.

Japanese American National Museum
100 N. Central Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90012
janm.org

Transpacific Borderlands: The Art of Japanese Diaspora in Lima, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and São Paulo

For more information about the exhibition, visit janm.org/transpacific-borderlands.

Japanese American National Museum
100 N. Central Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90012
janm.org

Madalena Hashimoto

Born 1956 in São Paulo, Brazil; lives and works in São Paulo.

Madalena Hashimoto holds a master’s degree in engraving from Washington University and a PhD in philosophy from University of São Paulo (USP). She currently teaches undergraduate and post-graduate programs at the USP Center for Japanese Studies, translates literary texts, and researches erotic woodblock printing (shunga) from the Edo period. Hashimoto’s work, which has been exhibited in Brazil and the United States, incorporates Japanese techniques and materials—such as woodblock printing and washi paper and ink—as well as Western influences, reflecting her hybrid Nipo-Brazilian identity.
--
ARTIST PROFILE:

Born 1956 in São Paulo, Brazil; lives and works in São Paulo.

TRANSCRIPTION:

I’m third generation Japanese Brazilian. I went to school. I loved studying. So first college I did was fine arts, but then two years later I entered Letters, and that’s where I am now. In one side I do my visual work as an artist and also I teach Japanese Literature, which I really thought was a wonderful. I don’t consider myself professional artist in this way that market is understood.

Last year I took part in a show here in São Paulo and I build a big wall and two sidewalls with what I have left of these thousand faces images. Looking at the show I was asked why some of the faces were like oriental or Japanese. Is it because I myself am from Japanese origin? So what can I answer? Yes, of course I am from Japanese descendants and I have in these thousand faces series, some of my family are represented and of course they have this Japanese faces. What I was thinking is, that we have so many people in the world, and they are so different. Each of them they have such a rich life so, what I wanted to do is to put them together with equal importance.

I would like to talk about these works whose title is “Public Life Private Life.” It begins as an idea of talking about memories: my memories or public memories, memories of people who were, at some time, my age. And growing up in Sao Paulo in Brazil in the sixties, with all the military activity, I was a little kid, but I felt the violence of the social movement. Of course as a kid you don’t understand very well, so the soldiers they don’t seem to be too aggressive, because it is seen through the eyes of a child. And I wanted to express all the important feelings of not being able to react. And I could go on with this work more years, thinking some more about the memories that were haunting my existence. A piece is not finished when it’s finished. It can go on forever like our memories.

* * * * *

Transpacific Borderlands: The Art of Japanese Diaspora in Lima, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and São Paulo is on view at the Japanese American National Museum from September 17, 2017 - February 25, 2018. The exhibition examines the experiences of artists of Japanese ancestry born, raised, or living in either Latin America or predominantly Latin American neighborhoods of Southern California. Madalena Hashimoto is one of the artists featured in this exhibition.

For more information about the exhibition, visit janm.org/transpacific-borderlands

Japanese American National Museum
100 N. Central Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90012
janm.org

Transpacific Borderlands: The Art of Japanese Diaspora in Lima, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and São Paulo examines the experiences of artists of Japanese ancestry born, raised, or living in either Latin America or predominantly Latin American neighborhoods of Southern California. In this series of short videos, artists featured in the exhibition discuss their work, their backgrounds, and their identities as Nikkei in Latin America and Southern California.

* * * * *

Transpacific Borderlands: The Art of Japanese Diaspora in Lima, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and São Paulo is on view at the Japanese American National Museum from September 17, 2017 – February 25, 2018. For more information about the exhibition, visit janm.org/transpacific-borderlands.

Japanese American National Museum 100 N. Central Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90012
janm.org

Major support for Transpacific Borderlands is provided through grants from the Getty Foundation.

Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA - Latin American & Latino Art in LA

Transpacific Borderlands: The Art of Japanese Diaspora in Lima, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and São Paulo is part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles, taking place from September 2017 through January 2018 at more than 70 cultural institutions across Southern California. Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty.