Positive Exposure at TAG Gallery

Two pieces from my “con.Text“ series, “Father II” and “Kimiko Kitagaki” will be on view at TAG Gallery from May 1 to May 24 as a part of Positive Exposure, an exhibition celebrating perspectives of the Asian American Pacific Islander artistic community.

opening reception at TAG
5458 Wilshire Blvd

Saturday, May 4, 4–8 pm.

“Father II” 40 x 34 ink on panel

A portrait of my father based on a photograph taken by Dorothea Lange when she was commissioned by the War Relocation Authority to photograph the Internment of Japanese Americans residing on the west coast during WWII

The piece is rendered using text from the California Alien Land Law of 1913, which targeted mostly Japanese farmers who were “aliens ineligible for citizenship” and prohibited them from owning agricultural land or possessing long-term leases over it.

I was lucky to find three photographs taken by Dorothea Lange of my father and his family in San Francisco when he was 17. He went on to enlist into the U.S. Army out of the Topaz Internment camp in Utah and served as an interrogator and interpreter in the Pacific theatre for the Military Intelligence Service.

“Kimiko Kitagaki” 36 x 28 ink on panel

Another portrait based on a photograph taken by Dorothy Lange of Kimiko Kitagaki as she waited with her family to board a bus that would take them to Tanforan Assembly Center, a converted horse stable, and eventually to more permanent housing in an internment camp built in inhospitable surroundings inland from the coast.

The words used to make the marks that compose this portrait are the text from Executive Order 9066, which was an Executive Order signed by FDR that established military areas excluding those of Japanese descent and establishing the internment camps away from the West Coast.