BIO (he/him/his) Jesus Barraza is an interdisciplinary artist who earned an MFA in social practice and a master’s degree in visual critical studies from California College of the Arts as well as a BA in Raza Studies from San Francisco State University. He is a cofounder of Dignidad Rebelde, a graphic arts collaboration that produces screen prints, political posters, and multimedia projects. Jesus is also a member of JustSeeds Artists Cooperative, a decentralized group of political artists based in Canada, the United States and Mexico. From 2003-2010, he was a partner at Tumis design studio where he worked as web developer, graphic designer, and project manager. In 2003 he co-founded Taller Tupac Amaru, a screenprinting studio that produced political posters and fine art prints. He is currently a lecturer in the ethnic studies department at UC Berkeley.
STATEMENT In the contemporary moment we are dealing with a myriad of issues and contemplating what kind of future we are heading towards. In the face of everything from climate change to migrant rights, people are coming together to organize and challenge those in power who are creating policies that choose to continuously ignore the people and embrace profits. My piece “Resist” is a way of recognizing the people who are dreaming of another world and working to make it a reality.
BIO (she/her/hers) Ellen Bepp is a mixed media artist, born and raised in the Japantown community of San Jose, Calif. For 40 years she has aspired to give voice to her Japanese cultural roots through visual expression, often translating the legacy of the World War II American concentration camps into peace and community-building. She has exhibited her art nationally, including at the Oakland Museum of California, the Berkeley Art Center and the Euphrat Museum of Art at De Anza College in Cupertino, Calif. Her work has spanned various media, including wearable art, installations, theatrical costume and set design, collage, and hand-cut paper. Ellen’s political activism and interest in the folk arts and weaving traditions of Latin America has inspired her arts research and humanitarian cultural exchange projects in Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Brazil, Nicaragua and Cuba.
STATEMENT Environmental justice is one of the issues being addressed at this assembly. I believe it is rooted in a deep respect for nature and for the fair and humanitarian treatment of all people. The piece Year of the Oil Slick is from a series inspired by the Japanese textile motifs found on the traditional jacket (maiwai-gi) worn by fishermen when praying for or celebrating a good catch.
According to Chinese/Japanese legend, certain symbols are used as auspicious designs which traditionally adorn the maiwai jacket: Year of the Oil Slick features the turtle image, symbolizing good luck and longevity and the sacred straw rope (shimenawa) which denotes purity. Behind these symbols are strong spiritual forces, a respect for nature, and a sense of hope for humanity.
However, these auspicious designs are juxtaposed with ominous graphic corporate trademarks representing power and greed in the form of the logos for Shell Oil and Chevron. As the top multinational polluters, these companies are guilty of perpetuating the pollution crisis and must be held accountable.
My work is a plea to oppose this affront to what once was considered sacred. We must continue to question what we should regard as a symbol of environmental justice today –the sacred turtle or the Chevron logo?
BIO (she/her/hers) Ali Blum (aliblumart.com) received her BFA from Cornell University in painting and her MFA in printmaking from Washington University in St. Louis. She has participated in artist residencies at Curtiduria Print Shop in Oaxaca, Mexico and the de Young Museum in San Francisco. Ali has exhibited her work in selected group and solo shows at many venues, including the de Young Museum, John Hartell Gallery at Cornell University, the San Francisco Public Library, Museo de la Filatelia de Oaxaca, Ligne Roset, Front Gallery, SOMArts, Paxton Gate Curiosities for Kids, The Mission Cultural Center, and The San Francisco Jewish Library.
Ali teaches visual art at Drew School in San Francisco. She has also conducted workshops and live art demonstrations at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the de Young Friday Night Events, the California Academy of Sciences, the Asian Art Museum intern program, and The Jewish Museum. She is a member of the California Printmaking Society.
STATEMENT My current work focuses on social justice. I have become increasingly concerned and active in raising my voice through art and teaching to address issues around the care of our planet and all lives intertwined together.
BIO (she/her/hers) Melanie Cervantes (dignidadrebelde.com) creates visual art that is inspired by the people around her and her communities’ desire for radical social transformation. Her intention is to create a visual lexicon of resistance to multiple oppressions that will inspire curiosity, raise consciousness, and inspire solidarities among communities of struggle. She is the cofounder of Dignidad Rebelde, a graphic arts collaboration that produces art projects grounded in Third World and indigenous movements that build people’s power.
Melanie is the inaugural recipient of the two-year Art In Resistance Fellowship (2019–2020). In addition, Dignidad Rebelde has been recognized with The Piri Thomas & Suzie Dodd Cultural Activist Award from Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice (2016), the Community Award, National Association of Chicana/Chicano Studies (2015), the NALAC Fund for the Arts (2012), and the Exemplary Leadership award from San Francisco State University (2010).
STATEMENT Climate change, systems in the prison industrial complex—such as detention centers, prisons, and jails—national borders, and racial injustice all contribute to exclusion and lack of recognition. The artwork I selected for consideration connects with the theme of "Recognition" and addresses systems of oppression. It also makes people feel like they belong and that they are safe and can thrive.
BIO (she/her/hers) CJ Grossman is an art activist who shows her work internationally. She received her MFA from the California College of the Arts and works in mixed media, specializing in book arts.
STATEMENT My piece, MeToo/HerToo—Hung Out to Dry, was part of an art installation of 120 bra-books. Each bra was individually painted, stuffed, decorated, sewed, and lined and covers a book about the #MeToo movement as well as individual stories from women who were sexually harassed, abused, raped, or killed. Bras were used as book covers because they are the most intimate garment that pertains only to women.
BIO (he/him/his) Mark Harris is an award-winning artist, activist, and educator based in San Francisco. He has combined his passions for art making and activism to create a unique visual vocabulary that he uses to engage his audience on critical issues facing society today. The Metro Silicon Valley News called his work “brilliantly subversive.” His work is in the collections of international and domestic art collectors.
Mark’s expanded practice includes mentoring at-risk youth through art education programs as well as teaching art at schools such as the Lycée Français de San Francisco and Yang Fan Academy. In 2017 Mark received the Teacher 4 Social Justice award.
STATEMENT What do you think of when you see a black child superimposed on an American flag? How would it be different if the image had a white child instead? How should we, in the symbolism of our nation, memorialize the unjust slaughter of African Americans, much of it state-sponsored, and the perpetrators who still have not been brought to justice? What do we risk if we question the accepted symbolism of the American flag? Social ostracism? Economic disadvantage? What do we risk losing if we don’t question it? Living intentional and connected lives as individuals and communities? Perpetuating, whether consciously or unconsciously, an unjust status quo? Some make the choice to not engage in politics, and may even proclaim their choice proudly. But what are the politics that, in turn, made that choice possible? What happens when those with the privilege to remain apolitical are confronted with the entrenched forces that undergird the life they know? Without recognition of these systemic forces we lose the interconnectedness and appreciation that are the very heart of our human existence. We all lost, and daily lose, the productivity and contributions to society that could have been made by all those whose lives were stressed to the breaking point.
BIO (she/her/hers) Nancy Hom (nancyhomarts.com) is an artist, writer, curator, and arts consultant. Born in Toisan, China and raised in New York City, she has been an influential leader in the San Francisco Bay Area art scene since 1974. Nancy has created many iconic images for community cultural events as well as political and social causes. Through her posters, poetry, illustrations, installations, and curatorial work, she has used the arts to affirm the histories, struggles, and contributions of communities of color.
She has also nurtured the creative and organizational growth of more than a dozen Bay Area arts organizations, including Kearny Street Workshop, an Asian American arts organization where she served as director from 1995 to 2003. Nancy has been named a Gerbode Fellow and a KQED Local Hero. She also received the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors grant and the San Francisco Foundation Community Leadership Award.
STATEMENT I was hired by the Women’s Economic Agenda Project to create a poster calling attention to the inequality in the workplace. I silkscreened the poster with their suggested words pointing out the fact that if women were paid equally, half the women in this country would not be living in poverty.
BIO (he/him/his) Sam Huang (www.theartofsamson.xyz) immigrated with his family from Taiwan to the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the early 1970s. As he learned English, he developed a strong affinity for the visual arts. Sam began to draw and paint, catching the attention of his teachers. He was often selected by his teachers or the principal to design school projects, winning several competitions and awards. In high school, his teachers and counselor encouraged him to apply to art schools, but he chose to study science and engineering to fulfill the wishes of his working class, immigrant parents. But he never abandoned his love for art and taught himself art techniques as well as western and eastern art history.
Sam is now a full-time dedicated artist, painting daily in mostly oil and watercolor—both en plein air and in his studio.
STATEMENT I paint mostly in oil and watercolor, both en plein air and in my studio. The inspiration for my work can come from anywhere—from traveling to new places, a direct personal experience, my vivid imagination, or images from the Internet. Everything is fair game for me. I also love to experiment with new ways to express myself, and am continuously pushing or bending the rules of painting. Painting is my life now, and making great art is the goal.
The painting “Three Spaces,” addresses the issue of environmental justice, allowing the viewer to look into a possibility of the future. This painting is divided into three space planes: 1) The lower plane represents the space below sea level and contains a submerged city inundated by the rising sea level or caused by a natural disaster from climate change. The silhouettes of abundant and diverse sea lives suggest ghostly forms that no longer exist due to extinction. 2) The middle plane is the space above sea level and shows the rooftop portions of damaged skyscrapers rendered useless from the rising sea level. In this space, there is a survivor in a kayak searching for other survivors to rebuild humanity. 3) The upper plane is the vast unknown universe and represents nature and forces in which human beings are an integral part of the whole. Once we break the balance, a force of nature stronger than we humans will adjust us with disastrous consequences.
BIO (she/her/hers) Dana King (danakingart.com) is an artist who brings humanity to the African American story. The magazine, Black Art in America has identified her as one of 10 Emerging Black Female Artists to Collect and calls her work “important as it places history in contemporary contexts so that we are reminded of those who fought for our freedom.” Dana hopes to continue to create public and private art pieces that inspire people to dig deeper into the true stories of American history.
STATEMENT The work I submitted, by their very being, demands recognition as they reflect the conflicts of our time. They revolve around the power within us to uphold what is necessary and right.
The “Chrysalis” represents a woman’s strength and vulnerability. Although they may seem to be two diametrically opposed concepts, women are forced to navigate their lives on constant alert. We are at our power zenith, however, when we open to our own direction. Consider the chrysalis of the butterfly: It starts as a caterpillar, builds a cocoon and after a time, emerges as a butterfly. It's the same process for the emergence of a girl from young woman to powerhouse.
BIO (she/her/hers) Susan Kitazawa was born in the northeastern United States, shortly after her parents were released from a U.S. government World War II concentration camp. She grew up on the East Coast and received a degree in cultural anthropology. After Susan moved to San Francisco, she eventually earned a more practical degree in nursing, working as an RN for 25 years in public hospitals, clinics, and schools in San Francisco until retiring in 2006. Susan has found time in retirement to write and make art, participating in local art shows and publishing her work in several anthologies. She also enjoys continuing to advocate for people facing life challenges, focusing recently on public transit and disability issues.
Neither her love for traveling nor her enjoyment of dancing Argentine tango have waned, even as her eyesight diminishes.
STATEMENT I have been making art since I was a very young child, often using found materials or easily available things such as old newspapers and paste made from leftover, cooked white rice. Encouraged by my parents, I learned to make do with what was available, coming up with creative workarounds through active problem-solving. I enrolled in my first studio art class after I retired from nursing. Art making became a tool for grieving the loss of my eyesight and all the changes brought on by this decline in my visual health. I drew somewhat surreal and confusing images because this is what was happening to my visual world. Vision loss and blindness were themes of some of my art, though I always explored other artistic themes, too. I began making more tactile art that could be enjoyed by others with visual limitations.
My most recent work, entitled “All of Us,” celebrates the fact that each one of us has abilities and disabilities and that we can all follow our dreams. I created this work using my fingers to paint and to add tactile elements. Making the most of whatever we have available to us—wisdom passed along to me by my parents—serves me well in art and in life.
BIO (she/her/hers) Lucien Kubo is a Sansei, a third generation Japanese American who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. An important part of her life experience is that of her parents, their parents and the more than 110,000 Japanese Americans incarcerated in internment camps during WWII.
STATEMENT I see how other marginalized people are treated in this country and identify with our common struggles. I think of my art as philosophical, historical, and personal narratives. I am sorting out how I feel about humanity and the world around me. I hope my art engages the viewer, creates dialogue and encourages change.
The art I submitted reflects humanity. In “Japanese American Internment,” we see history repeating itself as other people, children and parents, find themselves in cages, their humanity denied.
BIO (she/her/hers or they/them/theirs) Claudia Leung’s (instagram.com/verbal.visual) artistic practice focuses on the intersectionality of movements for justice, calling attention to the ways in which liberation for all communities is intertwined. She creates cards, calendars, clothing, zines, and small pieces that can be gifted as a way of showing appreciation and sharing inspiration, as well as larger posters and prints that are used in the context of protest and activism. Her practice includes printmaking, zines, and book arts, graphic design, poetry, and prose writing as well as two- and three-dimensional protest art. She also works in the world of arts and culture funding as a communications professional and grantmaker. She draws on her experience as a mixed race, queer, Asian activist with a disability to inform the form, content, and ethos of her work.
STATEMENT "be legible" addresses my existence as a person who constantly has to prove that I belong. I am multiracial—neither white nor Asian, and yet both. I have an invisible disability: I require accommodations to access certain activities and spaces, and am often met with disbelief or denial of my needs. I am queer—not straight, not gay, or lesbian, while the terms pansexual and bisexual only approximate my reality. There are other salient identities in which I slide between polarities, too—of class, of mental health, of geography. My experience is both specific and universal. We are all required to make our sameness and our difference apparent to others, despite the violence, the reduction, and the erasure this can cause. I've explored this theme throughout my life, as an academic, an activist, and as an artist. “be legible” is the result of building up layers of meaning over a lifetime, and rendering that meaning for others' consumption, borrowing from references available in the world around us. It also represents a literal gouging of lived experience, as we fit ourselves into boxes to allow the world to make sense of us. Created by a process of slow, manual addition, as well as a quick, mechanical, and precise process of subtraction, "be legible" highlights this dichotomy: developing a complex personhood over time, as well as the sudden flattening that can result when we must represent ourselves.
BIO (he/him/his) Ricardo Levins Morales (rlmartstudio.com) describes himself as a “healer and trickster organizer disguised as an artist.” His activism includes support work for the Black Panthers and Young Lords as well as participation in or acting in solidarity with farmers, environmental, labor, racial justice, and peace movements. He sees his art and organizing practices as means to address individual, collective, and historical trauma. Ricardo coleads workshops on trauma and resilience for organizers as well as trainings on creative organizing, social justice strategy, and sustainable activism. He also mentors and supports young activists. Ricardo and a crew of coworkers operate out of a studio/storefront gallery in south Minneapolis.
STATEMENT UNdocumented speaks to the millions who are forced to live like fugitives in plain view because that insecurity serves the interests of politicians and corporations. This poster flips the narrative by switching out the “un” in undocumented for the UN of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Under its terms we are all recognized as fully human and as citizens of our shared world. The young person in the image refuses to be a shadow.
BIO (he/his/him/they) Fernando Martí (justseeds.org/artist/fernandomarti) is a writer, printmaker, community architect, and housing activist. Originally from Ecuador, he has been deeply involved in San Francisco’s struggles for affordable housing, community land, and climate justice since the mid-1990s. His work reflects his formal training in urbanism, his roots in rural Ecuador, and his current residence in the heart of Empire. His poetry, prints, and constructions inhabit the space between ancestral traditions of place and utopian liberatory practices. His artwork can be seen regularly on justseeds.org.
STATEMENT “No Mas Muertes” was originally a linocut created for the Justseeds/CultureStrike Climate Change Portfolio, in collaboration with No More Deaths, a humanitarian organization based in southern Arizona. Its mission is to end death and suffering in the Mexico–U.S. borderlands through civil initiative: people of conscience working openly and in community to uphold fundamental human rights. In addition to abuse documentation, deportation aid, and property recovery, No More Deaths maintains a humanitarian presence in the 262-square-mile corridor where more than half of the known deaths of climate and economic migrants have occurred in recent years.
BIO (he/him/his) Innosanto Nagara (www.pinterest.it/innosanto/at-work) has long been involved in the Design for Social Change movement. Known first for his work through Inkworks Press, he went on to become the founding member of Design Action Collective—a worker-owned, unionized design studio serving grassroots, labor, and activist organizations. He is also the author and illustrator of social justice themed children’s books, including the national bestseller, A is for Activist.
STATEMENT I will create an original poster in the style that I am most recognized for. It will be a mix of image and text, like a political poster, with a single strong subject and text. The exact wording will be a single word or phrase that evokes the theme of "Recognition." The image will be of a rank-and-file member (or members) exuding confidence, determination, and strength.
BIO For more than 40 years Jos Sances (josart.net) has made his living as a printmaker and muralist in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1989 he founded Alliance Graphics, a union screenprint shop. He also cofounded Mission Grafica at the Mission Cultural Center and worked there from 1980-1988. In 2010 and 2016 the Library of Congress acquired 495 of Jos’s prints, which represent a broad overview of his printmaking. He has shown his screenprints, sculpture, and ceramic tile in venues such as the Avenue 50 Gallery in Los Angeles, the Richmond Art Center, The Berkeley Art Center, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona, Calif., where he exhibited “Trump Tower,” an 8-foot tall, screenprinted, ceramic tile obelisk.
During the past 25 years mural and public art have been Jos's passions. He has painted murals at the Oakland Coliseum and received tile mural commissions for the Juvenile Justice Center in San Leandro, Calif.; AMTRAK/BART Station, Richmond, Calif.; the 16th St. BART station in San Francisco; the Castro Valley Library and Arnett Watson Apartments in San Francisco; and a tile and etched metal artwork for Skyline College in San Bruno, Calif. In 2015 and 2016 three screenprinted tile murals and workshops were completed in Todos Santos, Baja, Mexico; Shoruq Cultural Center in Dheisheh Refugee Camp, Palestine; and with students at Berkeley High School in Calif.
STATEMENT My work is narrative—story telling based on my political concerns. Social justice issues have always been at the center of my art, which is rooted in a graphic printmaking tradition that strives to communicate complicated ideas instantly. This practice employs pictorial detail, involves the whole surface and conveys the message through both brevity and specificity.
In the past few years I have been drawn to scratch board as a starting point for my visual ideas. Drawings are then transformed into either screenprint editions or screenprinted ceramics.
I created the Colin Kaepernick, Martin Luther King Jr. artwork a week after Colin first knelt at a preseason game in San Diego. At the time I had no idea how impactful his action would be on the recognition of police violence in the Black community.
BIO (she/her/hers) Pallavi Sharma (pallavisharma.com) is a multidisciplinary artist whose research focuses on Asian American women's cultural production and activism. She is the director and founder of Inner Eye Art, a nonprofit arts organization in San Ramon, Calif. Pallavi received her BFA and MFA in art history at the Faculty of Fine Arts Baroda, India, and Ph.D. from the Nationa Museum Institute of History of Art, Museology, and Conservation. She presently teaches at the California College of the Arts.
STATEMENT “In Memory of” is an homage to Mahashveta Devi, Savitribai Phule, Snehlata Reddy, and many other philosophers, thinkers, and activists from my homeland and around the world who have worked tirelessly for human rights and gender equality. Their voices have generated power to speak against all kinds of oppression and have enabled us to see the wider and deeper divide which separates us. My body of work speaks through my baggage of experience and expresses my struggle and desire to move away from the unseen borders, peripheries, and false binaries; it allows me to let go of the labels which stop me from growing to my full potential.
BIO (she/her/hers) Judy Shintani (judyshintani.com) received her BS from San Jose State and MA from John F. Kennedy University (JFKU) in Berkeley. She has shown her work internationally at museums and galleries, including solo exhibitions and community engagement events at University of Pittsburgh; Springfield College, Mass.; Peninsula Museum of Art, Burlingame, Calif.; Santa Fe Art Institute; JFKU; and group shows at Station Museum, Houston; Presidio Trust, San Francisco; Euphrat Museum of Art, Cupertino; and 514 Arts, Albuquerque.
Judy was awarded residencies at Santa Fe Art Institute, Creativity Explored, Big Ideas Fest, and San Joaquin Delta College, including a fellowship at Vermont Studio.
STATEMENT Gathering strength and lessons from my female ancestors before me, I recognize my grandmother, mother, and aunt in these three pieces. They represent steadfastness, beauty, diligence, hard work, family, and truth. My grandmother worked alongside her husband farming oysters, my aunt was a resident hotel owner, and my mother was the first Asian American elementary school teacher in her town. Overcoming hard times and trauma of discrimination, they each thrived and raised families that continue to flourish today.
BIO (he/him/his) Brian Singer (www.someguy.is), also known as someguy, is a San Francisco-based fine artist whose projects have received international attention. His art ranges from intimate works with paper to large-scale participatory projects. He is best known for his provocative social projects, such as "TWIT Spotting (Texting While In Traffic)" and "Home Street Home." In 2000, he launched "The 1000 Journals Project," which was turned into a book and a feature-length documentary, and has been exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.
Brian is also a graphic designer who has created work for Apple, Facebook, Pinterest, Chronicle Books, and many others. In addition to being recognized with numerous awards and publications, he has served on the advisory board for the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery and the national board of AIGA, the professional association for design.
STATEMENT Much of my work is related to issues facing society, be it homelessness, privacy issues, or distracted driving. My piece deals with the broader issues being addressed at the assembly. It does not directly address a specific issue or topic, to me it's indicative of how many Americans feel in response to challenges that face us.
"Defend" was created as a call to action, to motivate people to defend things that are under continual threat of being defunded. While I had certain causes in mind when I made the piece, it was intentionally left vague and open to each individual’s interpretation. (It will resonate with some folks by relating to environmental justice, and others by relating to Medicare for All or Planned Parenthood.)
BIO (he/him/his) Truong Tran (gnourtnart.com) is a displaced, replaced, reclaimed artist. In 2015 Truong, along with hundreds of other artists who call San Francisco home were being displaced from working studio spaces in the Mission District of San Francisco. He fought this eviction against the developers all the way to City Hall. He also learned that an even greater displacement was quietly taking place. While attention was being focused on the plight of artists, communities of color and the working class were being erased in a very different way. Developers were taking away vital resources and the spaces that housed their organizations and making it available to the recently displaced artists, including Truong. He was offered a space and ultimately turned it down because he could not live with the idea that he was taking up a space that once belonged to an organization such as the Children’s Homeless Network or the dollar store. Take away the resources needed a community to thrive and you will effectively erase the community.
STATEMENT Based on the sanitation strike of city workers in Memphis, 1968, “I AM A MAN” is inspired by the image of Black men striking. This image has haunted me for so many years. I am forever imprinted by the sense of pride and dignity of those men standing in protest, the strength and clarity of the statement and the dignity of holding oneself and one's community in the face of such blatant racism and bigotry. I am haunted by the image of soldiers holding bayonets pointed in the direction of unarmed citizens, our citizens. I am haunted by the construct that the image and consciousness of that moment is somehow embedded in the past, that we have come a long way from that day in protest. In reality, it is very much in the here and the now of this place we call America. This is made in the name of art, life, protest, and resistance. It is also a lamentation of humanity, its fragility in the hands of those who choose to hold and point the guns and bayonets. I am haunted by my imagination of what that moment and that image holds, in the past, present, and future of our lives.
BIO (she/her/hers) Patricia Miye Wakida (wasabipress.com) is a fourth-generation Japanese American illustrator, artist, and community historian based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has worked as an apprentice papermaker in Gifu, Japan and as an apprentice letterpress printer and hand bookbinder in Berkeley, Calif. Patricia maintains her own linoleum block and letterpress business under the “wasabi press” imprint. Her work has been exhibited at venues including the Autry Museum; the National Steinbeck Center; San Francisco Center for the Book; the San Francisco Main Public Library; Oakland Art Gallery; Another Room Book Arts; Rock, Paper, Scissors; SOMArts; New Langton Arts; and the Korean Cultural Center of Los Angeles. She currently lives in Oakland, Calif.
STATEMENT On May 12 and 13, 1942, all persons of Japanese descent living in the city of Fresno were instructed to meet at the Droge Building, on the corner of Inyo and Van Ness, where an official wartime civil control station was established, to exchange their personal identities for government numbers. This involved registering, interviewing, and processing Japanese Americans for mandatory detention in temporary facilities known as "assembly centers," such as the Fresno County fairgrounds and Camp Pinedale, and later to more permanent detention centers in remote parts of the country. A large percentage of Japanese Americans living in Fresno would be forced to live in Arkansas and Arizona, living in prison camps for up to three years. Resistance or refusal to “evacuate” would lead to imprisonment in federal jail. My parents were small children during the World War II incarceration and both were born in Fresno County to Japanese American parents who were U.S. citizens.
In honor of my late grandmother, Miyeko Kebo, I have affixed her family number onto the print, “I Am An American: Family 25344,” so that her journey through the Droge Building, itself now a ghost of the past, will be remembered. It took me years to understand and to delve into this terrifying period of my family's history, to acknowledge that her experiences had been largely ignored or justified by the government for most of her life. Through this linoleum block image, I recognize the past, and reclaim her face and body from historical memory.
Jenifer K. Wofford (wofflehouse.com) is a San Francisco-based artist whose work plays with notions of hybridity, authenticity, and global culture, often with a humorous bent.
Her work has been exhibited in the Bay Area at the Berkeley Art Museum, Oakland Museum of California, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Southern Exposure, and Kearny Street Workshop. She has also shown work at New Image Art (Los Angeles), Wing Luke Museum (Seattle), DePaul Museum (Chicago), Silverlens (Philippines), VWFA (Malaysia), and Osage (Hong Kong).
Jenifer was born in San Francisco and raised in a mixed Filipino/American family in Hong Kong, Dubai, Malaysia, and Calif. She holds degrees from the San Francisco Art Institute (BFA) and UC Berkeley (MFA). Her awards include the Eureka Fellowship, the Murphy Fellowship, and grants from the San Francisco Arts Commission, Art Matters, and the Center for Cultural Innovation. Wofford is a 2017 recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant.
STATEMENT My submission addresses "Recognition" by way of history, memory, and feminism. "Lolas" is a suite of portrait prints of some of the longest-living “Lolas” (Filipina grandmothers), who survived the horrors of being WWII "comfort women" (look it up), and lived to old age as survivors, activists, and esteemed elders. Endurance, survival, grace, and beauty.