The SDSU University Art Gallery presents Reflecting on Ruth Asawa and the Garden of Remembrance,through April 12. The University Art Gallery is open Tuesday through Thursday from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. and by appointment (closed April 1 – 3). Admission is free and open to the public.
The exhibition, which originated at San Francisco State University, examines the legacy of Japanese American incarceration during WWII through the lens of The Garden of Remembrance (2000 – 2002), a permanent public art memorial on San Francisco State University’s campus created by Ruth Asawa and others to honor the resilience of the Japanese American community.
Reflecting on Ruth Asawa and the Garden of Remembrance includes newly commissioned and existing work by Mark Baugh-Sasaki, Ruka Kashiwagi, Paul Kitagaki Jr., Lisa Solomon, and TT Takemoto.
Each artist was invited to interpret elements of Asawa’s life and legacy, and the history of Japanese American incarceration in the United States. The San Diego State University iteration has added the work of emerita professor, Wendy Maruyama, from The Tag Project which examines the same subject.
As a teenager, Asawa herself was taken from her family’s farm in California and sent to a prison camp in Arkansas. While acknowledging the overall strength and resilience of the Japanese American community at this time and for generations to come, the Garden specifically calls out the names of the 19 SF State students of Japanese ancestry expelled at that time, due to the edict issued in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, signed Feb. 19, 1942.
In his new work Confluence, Mark Baugh-Sasaki explores family histories, including his father’s time at the Tule Lake concentration camp, and his family’s California orchards and farms that were saved for them by neighbors and friends. His installation includes personal archive materials in conversation with the “visual language of Japanese garden design and the display of Bonsai and Suiseki.”
Kashiwagi’s experimental creative process explores their ancestry, using tools such as projection mapping, video, sculpture, and performance to tell stories of the past, present, and future. Their new work looks to their grandfather, a soldier in the 442nd infantry regiment, a segregated Japanese American military unit founded June 15, 1942, that was the most decorated in US military history.
Maruyama is an emerita faculty member of SDSU’s School of Art and Design Furniture Design and Woodworking Program. Her work in the exhibition is one of a series of hanging sculptures from The Tag Project that represents every camp location, each composed of replicas of the identification tags worn by those who were incarcerated.
Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Kitagaki Jr. visited the Japanese American incarceration site in Topaz, Utah returning with a wooden chair built from scraps of wood by his grandfather while imprisoned in that camp. Kitagaki Jr. uses this imagery to add to his ongoing Gambatte series. Based on Dorothea Lange’s images of Japanese Americans taken for the War Relocation Authority, and similar images of the Manzanar incarceration center taken by Ansel Adams, Kitagaki, Jr. has located the survivors from these pictures to make new portraits.
Takemoto is an artist and scholar whose work explores Asian American queer history including the hidden dimensions of same-sex intimacy and queer sexuality for Japanese Americans incarcerated by the US government during WWII. Their experimental film installation created for this project explores the legacy of fish canning in San Diego during WWII, and the people doing this work.
Solomon’s installation reflects her profound interest in the idea of hybridization (sparked by her Hapa heritage – she is ½ Japanese and ½ white). Her mixed media work revolves around traditional Japanese knot-making and dyeing.
This project is organized by Fine Arts Gallery Director Sharon E. Bliss and SFSU Lecturer in Art and Curator for the Fine Arts Gallery Kevin B. Chen, working with an advisory committee of activists, artists, writers, scholars, and students. An accompanying publication includes new scholarship from Lewis Kawahara, Weston Teruya, and Patricia Wakida.
Reflecting on Ruth Asawa and the Garden of Remembrance is co-organized by the SDSU Art Galleries and San Francisco State University’s Fine Arts Gallery. The exhibition is co-curated by Bliss and Chen. Major support for this exhibition has been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts with additional support from the Henri and Tomoye Takahashi Charitable Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Programming is supported by the SDSU School of Art and Design and the College for Professional Studies and Fine Arts.
The University Art Gallery (School of Art and Design) is located on the 4th floor of the school’s courtyard. The address is 5500 Campanile Drive.
For more information visit art.sdsu.edu, email [email protected], or call (619) 594-5171.
PHOTO CAPTION: Ruka Kashiwagi, Go for Broke, 2024 Cotton tapestry 62 x 42 inches, courtesy of the artist. Photo credit: Claire S Burke.
