Distillations: Meditations on the Japanese American Experience

Arts & Consciousness Gallery, John F. Kennedy University
August 17-September 18. Reception: August 21, 6-9pm
Last fall, after meeting other Japanese American Sansei artists through the Asian American Women's Artists’ Association, I suggested that we join forces for a group show. Reiko Fujii, Lucien Kubo, Judy Shintani and I share the same heritage from different vantage points. We work in a variety of media and techniques to express the rich complexities of past and present, legacy and duty, history and secrets. Here's what I wrote for our catalog:

The on-going legacy of the Japanese American experience has rarely been examined through a Sansei lens. Art by first-generation Issei and second-generation Nisei who were incarcerated in American concentration camps during World War II has been well-documented, as has the heavily assimilated and media-centric landscape of younger API artists.  But the Sansei have remained a shadow or sandwich generation subsumed between survivor guilt and filial piety on the one hand and kodomo no tame ni (sacrifice for our children) on the other.

The Issei identity was defined by immigration, the Nisei by the mass incarceration. The Sansei children of the incarcerated have a foot in two, maybe three worlds, struggling to find balance along the continuum of Japanese>American. The  four of us, now in our 50s and 60s, were born too late to be incarcerated ourselves, but we are old enough to have been influenced by our grandparents’ Issei lifestyles and values, by our Nisei parents’ responses to incarceration and by our own pressures to function in the mainstream rather than in the sheltered backwaters of ethnic enclaves.

We are distinct from the Yonsei, Gosei and Hapa (fourth and fifth generation and mixed heritage) who often express a sense of anger, confusion or loss. The younger generations seek reflections of themselves in the media because they did not grow up seeing themselves reflected in the eyes of a close-knit community. Their childhoods were sanitized of the mud and weeds and sidewalk interactions of traditional lifestyles and cultures.  But many Sansei still remember our grandparents' egg farms, strawberry ranches, and single-room occupancy hotels. Our responses to our heritage are diverse, yet remarkably similar, expressing themselves in family ties, community service, political awareness, and a hyper-sensitivity to equal justice for other marginalized peoples. We are Americanized and yet oblique, liberated yet bound by deeply felt obligation.

Why is our perspective important? Our nation is groping for ways to back out of  the evolutionary dead-end of of a fossil-fuel economy. At a time when traditional cultures around the globe are dying faster than endangered species, we can no longer look back "home" to replenish traditional values; Japan's salarymen and AsiaPop dollies are almost as far removed from the ancient peasant ways as Japanese Americans are.  Perhaps because of the inherited weight of the incarceration, Sansei still embody traces of 19th-century Meiji-era values preserved in amber, as we sift through the gifts and pitfalls of our traditional culture and of our families’ multigenerational American journeys. What do we treasure and what can we lay to rest? How can we add to the multi-faceted and resilience wisdom America needs to meet the challenges of the 21st century?

Diaspora: Tradition, Locality and Identity

1) We Hold These Truths….

14.5"W x 10" H x 2.5"D. 2010.

Wood, cloth, paper, barbed wire, cigarbox, polymer clay, acrylic medium, copper dust.

Traditional materials: family photo, Japanese writing, origami paper, rice paper.

Contemporary issue: immigrants’ rights, civil liberties, community collaboration, Japanese/ American/Californian identity, national security, racial profiling.

My Issei grandparents immigrated from Japan in the 1910s. Like all Asian immigrants of the time, they were denied citizenship and property rights. Nevertheless, by the 1920s, they managed to lease a 140-acre farm north of Pismo Beach. Every year, the local Japanese American community demonstrated loyalty to their adopted country by participating in the local Independence Day parade. In this late 1920s photo, my mother and uncle stand in front of a flag- and flower-decked float (bearing kimono-clad dancers, out of frame).

Less than ten years later, anti-Japanese growers seized on World War II as an excuse to force Japanese Americans off the West Coast. 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated in American concentration camps. My family was exiled to the Arizona desert and did not resettle in Pismo Beach because of lingering postwar prejudice. The scars of their pea fields are still visible on the hills north of Pismo Beach.

I tell these stories to teach new immigrants that the forces of prejudice and exploitation have long roots, and we all have rights and responsibilities to to use the democratic process for positive change.

2) What They Could Carry….

Installation. 36"W x 82"H x 15"D. Mixed media: Buddhist shrine, evacuation basket, barbed wire, family photographs. 2010.

Traditional materials: Buddhist shrine, barbed wire, family photographs.

Contemporary issue: civil liberties, Japanese American identity, national security, racial profiling, historical presence of Asians in California.

Prior to WWII, two-thirds of Japanese Americans were Buddhist, but many hid their Buddhist ties after Pearl Harbor, and never fully reclaimed them. In the panicky days after the outbreak of WWII, frightened families hid or destroyed precious items connected with Japan, including shrines, photos, letters, and phonograph records. 

My grandparents lost almost everything in the "Evacuation" from the West Coast—the lease on their farm, the property they owned in town, even their house, which was burned to the ground. But they were devout Buddhists whose faith deepened in hard times. They were forced to destroy their shrine, but kept the Nembutsu prayer firmly in their hearts, along with memories of their lost land and community. Those values sustained them in the searing Arizona desert; in post-war migrant labor camps, and for the rest of their lives. Unlike many incarcerated families, my relatives talked openly about hard times, including the injustice of the concentration camps. They taught their children and grandchildren the importance of shinjin, deep faith, in using life’s challenges as growth opportunities.

If tradition is defined as meaningful cultural objects handed down from generation, barbed wire and luggage tags have, sadly, become traditional symbols for Japanese Americans. Many of us are four or five generations removed from Japan, and yet we still sometimes are told to “go back to where we came from.” We have been here for more than a century, yet period photographs are not part of the mainstream conception of Asians in America. My grandfather with horse-and-plow, my uncle playing baseball, my mother in kimono, dancing at Obon. Prior to the incarceration, we were proud to be American and proud to be Japanese. We did seem it as a choice between either-or, but both-and—two faces of a single whole.

Larger installation with the “American Dream” series and “We the People” series. (Concept sketch: actual installation would include 3 D installation “What They Carried” with three 12x12" canvas panels hung on aeither side. For larger images and commentary on the six panels, see http://www.flickr.com/photos/8517595@N05/sets/72157624099775623/

3) Know Your Place, mixed media installation, 32"w x 46"h x 22"d, acrylic on canvas with traditional silk malong, rice, sampaguita flower petals, spices, and found objects. 2010.

I am not Filipina American, but I grew up grew up in communities where Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Latinos, blacks, and marginalized white migrants were layered on the same terrain. Although particulars of culture, language and custom varied, many of the same issues resonated for successive groups consigned to the margins—inner cities, single room occupancy hotels, and the seasonal migration trails of agricultural workers. 

I grew up looking and listening to stories of commonality and difference. Filipinos face particular challenges around the impact of colonialism, Catholicism, and stereotyping as happy, laid-back service workers. They are rarely recognized for their intelligence and organizational and communication skills. 

Every young adult undergoes a journey to discover their place in the world. For immigrants or the children of immigrants, the odyssey can be complicated by forced assimilation and cultural dislocation. “Know Your Place” explores the struggle of a young Filipina to find balance amid conflicting messages and stereotypes about sexual orientation, gender, religion, culture, tradition and work. The work raises questions for the viewer of what it means to know and respect one’s true place in the world.

3B) Know Your Place as a larger installation with “The Gross Domestic Product” series and “The Nanny Question” series about Filipina overseas workers. 2008. However, this might push the balance too far away from traditional elements. (Actual installation would consist of “Know Your Place” 3D installation in a corner or against a flat wall with a set of 14"W x 11"H photocollages hung on either side.) For larger images and commentary on “The Gross Domestic Product” series and “The Nanny Question,” see http://www.flickr.com/photos/8517595@N05/sets/72157624099775623/

4) A Well-Made Life.

Photocollage. 17"W x 11"H. 2008

Traditional elements: Karuta cards, Japanese scissors, kimono fabrics. 

Contemporary issues: aging, end of life, loss of family farms, the value of sustainable agriculture.

At ninety, Jiichan was still feeding us new dishes learned from Japanese TV

—elaborately fussy concoctions you’d expect from a Tokyo housewife—

not from a callous-palmed old man in mud-caked workboots.

Not long after we found him on the roof—patching a leak with tarpaper—

He decided he was ready for a change.

He had a bad hip, fading sight and “water on his heart.” And he didn’t want to

keep calling Uncle Ray when he felt sick during the night

So he said good-bye to his ten-acre farm,

his cactus garden,

his fruit trees grown from cuttings

traded with long-dead friends.

He would miss fixing water pumps,

tightening door hinges,

and walking the muddy fields

amid the ghosts of

strawberry fields and orchards....

In spite of the twinkling trees and tasteful furniture

the  rest home was as impersonal

as a hotel lobby, and just as transitory.

It was not long before Jiichan checked out—

He moved on to another dimension.

Additional images from UC Santa Barbara show at  Flickr: Double Vision 

from upcoming Distillations show (JFK university) at:

Flickr: Distillations

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.

National WCA’s From the Center: Now! Juried by Lucy Lippard

The Nanny Question. Three-part series of 14W"x11"H photocollages.
The toys in the foreground live vastly better lifestyles than the children of the imported nannies and maids forced to leave their own children behind to care for the children of the affluent. When young people of any class aren't able spend time with their mothers, what kind of society are we creating?  (Concept and foreground photos by Shizue Seigel; background photos (by permission) by Flickr photographers Greg Anslow, Iman al-Dabbagh, Amaryllis Torres, Dale Charles, and Sonny Angulo.

I was thrilled and honored that the reknowned Lucy Lippard selected these three pieces for the National Women’s Caucus for Art 2010 From the Center: Now! exhibition at the Woman Made Gallery in Chicago early this year. http://womanmade.org/show.html?type=group&gallery=fromthecenter2010&pic=1

Lucy Lippard is an internationally known writer, activist, and curator from the United States. She was an early champion of feminist art, and among the first writers to books on contemporary art including From the Center and The Pink Glass Swan, and the recipient of the 1968 Guggenheim Fellowship, the Frank Mather Award for Criticism from the College Art Association, and two National Endowment of the Arts grants in criticism. She has written art criticism for Art in America, The Village Voice, In These Times, and Z Magazine. In 2007 Lippard received the Women’s Caucus for Art’s Life Time Achievement Award.

Lucy Lippard’s Juror's Statement
"Jurying is a painful process, almost as much so for the juror as for the juried. After the initial selections, the remaining decision can be really hard to make.... I also enjoyed reviewing such a vastly varied group of works demonstrating that feminist art and ideas are alive and well.

Interestingly these works radiate not much further from the center than they did in the early 1970s. There is more polish and perhaps less passion than in the wild and woolly early days of the Women’s Art Movement.... At the level of social justice, a huge amount of progress has been made and a huge amount of progress remains to be made.

Of course every jurying process is immensely personal, and because of my own work, I tend to select pieces dealing fairly directly with content. A number of artists courageously confronted child abuse and domestic violence, cultural differences, family traumas. I was struck by a certain melancholy, balanced by an assertive independence and a welcome sense of humor. Another thread, so to speak, was the number of pieces on clothing, specifically dresses. How many of us wear dresses on a regular basis? Not me, for sure. Yet these dresses seem to represent fantasies. They are for little girls and sexy sirens, representing our childhoods (happy and unhappy) and the dreams of glamour and success that remain intertwined in the female image, often seen through a lens of irony or disillusion.

Given the fact that so many of the leading eco-artists are women, there were fewer images than I had hoped for dealing with environmental and political issues, which affect us as women as much as more intimate issues. (I’ve always agreed that the personal is political, but the political is also personal.) Overt Lesbian images also seem to have fallen by the wayside since the 1970s, despite the fact that Queer theory has grandly expanded that field.I was given, of course, no names and no information whatsoever about the artists, so I have to hope that I’ve included some younger women whose feminism (or not) can be expressed in ways less visible to me in my own seventies. Not surprisingly, the videos were less reminiscent of feminist classics; this is a medium that has come into its own more recently. Nor was there any way for me to tell if any of the art selected was collaborative, a process I consider deeply feminist, brought home in the recent debut of The Heretics -- a film on the Heresies Collective, which provided many of my own epiphanies, a major inspiration to risk more, to support rather than to compete with other women, and to respect the power of more than one.” -Lucy R. Lippard