Double Vision: A Celebration of Hybridity

Double Vision: A Celebration of Hybridity

Digital Photography by Shizue Seigel, UC Santa Barbara Multicultraul Center, April 13-June 13

Artist’s Statement: Japanese American artist and writer Shizue Seigel blurs the boundaries between photography, painting, found objects and poetry to explore the shifting planes of multicultural identity. In today's evolving world, where minorities are the majority, the complexity of our stories is our American

story.

Through little-known narratives from many cultures, she illuminates the common humanity that transcends divisions of race, gender, class or national origin. We are a nation in transition in a world in flux, backing our way out of the evolutionary dead-end of a fossil fuel economy. It’s an exciting time to be alive, and to contribute to the on-going national conversation. But to do so effectively, we must be well-informed and open-minded. Who are the givers and the takers, the informed and the oblivious?  Who is American? What is progress? What gives us strength and how can we move forward together?

Bio:

Shizue Seigel was born in 1946, too late to be incarcerated in American concentration camps like her parents and 120,000 other Japanese Americans. But she earned her first dollar picking strawberries in a migrant labor camp for former incarcerees. As a child, she shuttled from segregated Baltimore to Occupied Japan to skid-row Stockton. Arriving in San Francisco in the late 50s, she flowed with the zeitgeist to the Haight Ashbury in the 60s, Indian ashrams in the 70s, the Financial District in the 80s, the AIDS epidemic in the 90s and today’s vibrant mix of arts and activism.

These experiences engendered an awareness of many cultures, and deep compassion for the disadvantaged.  After some arts training in painting and printmaking in the late 1970s, she became an art director at major advertising agencies with clients like Chevron, Kaiser Permanente and Wells Fargo.

In the early 90s, she developed a reality-based HIV-prevention campaign for African American women for the Centers for Disease Control.  It was a life-changing experience which sparked a passion for furthering social change through narratives about ordinary people.

After several years working with the poor, homeless and addicted, she began working with the Japanese American community as the editor of the Japanese American Historical Society’s Nikkei Heritage magazine, and the author of the book, In Good Conscience: Supporting Japanese Americans During the Internment (AACP, Inc. 2006).

Her paintings, photography and mixed media have been exhibited locally, nationally and internationally by the Women’s Caucus for Art, Asian American Women Artists’ Association, Manilatown Center, Kearny Street Workshop, Greenlining Institute, University of San Francisco, UC Santa Barbara, Women Made Gallery, the United Nations NGO Conference, Mexico City and others. Her poetry and other writing have been published in numerous anthologies and journals, including Cheers to Muses: Contemporary Works by Asian American Women and InvAsian: Growing Up Asian and Female in the United States.

Many thanks to Julianne Gavino and Viviana Marsano for making the exhibition possible. See all 29 images from the show at my Flickr site: www.flickr.com/  Screen Name: ShizueS. Album: Double Vision.