{"id":148819,"date":"2021-09-28T12:16:37","date_gmt":"2021-09-28T22:16:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=148819"},"modified":"2021-11-19T16:01:36","modified_gmt":"2021-11-20T02:01:36","slug":"ken-okiishi-exhibit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2021\/09\/28\/ken-okiishi-exhibit\/","title":{"rendered":"Asian-American artist traces racism roots to Pearl Harbor bombing"},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">Reading time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> 2<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minutes<\/span><\/span><div class=\"responsive-video-wrap-post\"><figure class=\"wp-block-embed wp-block-embed-youtube is-type-video is-provider-youtube epyt-figure\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"><div class=\"epyt-video-wrapper\"><iframe  id=\"_ytid_65761\"  width=\"620\" height=\"349\"  data-origwidth=\"620\" data-origheight=\"349\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/5IshQWQrmH4?enablejsapi=1&origin=https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu&rel=0&autoplay=0&cc_load_policy=0&cc_lang_pref=&iv_load_policy=1&loop=0&fs=1&playsinline=0&autohide=2&theme=dark&color=red&controls=1&disablekb=0&\" class=\"__youtube_prefs__  no-lazyload\" title=\"Asian-American artist traces racism roots to Pearl Harbor bombing\"  allow=\"fullscreen; accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen data-no-lazy=\"1\" data-skipgform_ajax_framebjll=\"\"><\/iframe><\/div><\/div><\/figure><\/div>\n<p>Immediately after the devastating surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, artist Ken Okiishi\u2019s grandfather unloaded all traces of the family\u2019s Japanese possessions by dumping them into M\u0101mala Bay. His rash decision came after receiving a frantic phone call from his brother, whose house had just been searched by the Honolulu police looking for connections to Japan.<\/p>\n<p>This leitmotif of American identity formation is interwoven in an art exhibit, <a href=\"https:\/\/hawaii.edu\/art\/ken-okiishi\/\"><em>Ken Okiishi: A Model Childhood<\/em><\/a>, on display at the University of <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> at M\u0101noa <a href=\"https:\/\/hawaii.edu\/art\/exhibitions-events-museum\/\">Art Gallery<\/a>. Okiishi meditates on the fraught legacy of Japanese-American history and the model minority myth in the larger contexts of American, global and continuously rewritten fragments of Asian-American history.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_148826\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-148826\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/manoa-art-ken-okiishi-exhibit-feature-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"Japanese doll display\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-148826\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/manoa-art-ken-okiishi-exhibit-feature-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/manoa-art-ken-okiishi-exhibit-feature-130x130.jpg 130w, https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/manoa-art-ken-okiishi-exhibit-feature.jpg 676w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-148826\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A photograph from 1940 of Okiishi\u2019s father as an infant, posed amid 50 Japanese dolls depicting the life of a warrior. (Courtesy of Ken Okiishi)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The exhibition features videos and photographs which include a display of Okiishi\u2019s childhood belongings (1978&#8211;2001), meticulously archived by his parents, who had settled in the university town of Ames, Iowa in the late 1950s; a video of the ruins of a concentration camp in Delta, Utah; and a large banner made from a Boys\u2019 Day photograph from 1940&#8212;Okiishi\u2019s father as an infant, posed amid 50 Japanese dolls which were thrown into the ocean a year later upon the threat of internment.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Everyone suffers from this history that has never been properly worked through and it continues to be played out on the faces and bodies of all Asian Americans up to and including in the present,&rdquo; Okiishi said about the works. &ldquo;Visiting the site that was held over my father\u2019s generation as the threat of non-compliance to strict and narrow parameters of being a good American, in the most violent form of that idea, punctured the fiction of power in the political moment when its real possibility of reinvigorated methods was becoming all too real in that inescapable sense of knowing but unable to do anything other than witness and survive.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>The exhibit curated by <strong>Maika Pollack<\/strong>, director and chief curator at the <abbr title=\"University of Hawaii\">UH<\/abbr> art museum, is on display through May 5, 2022.<\/p>\n<h2>Admission and event information<\/h2>\n<p><em>Ken Okiishi: A Model Childhood<\/em> is free and open to the public, Sunday&#8211;Thursday, noon&#8211;4 p.m. Parking is free for the exhibit on Sundays.<\/p>\n<p>Due to efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19, masks and social distancing are required for entry. <a href=\"https:\/\/manoa.hawaii.edu\/moving-forward\/visitor-faqs\/\">Check this link for the latest on visitor requirements during the pandemic.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/hawaii.edu\/art\/ken-okiishi\/\">Additional information can be found at the <abbr>UH<\/abbr> M\u0101noa Department of Art and Art History website.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>This event is an example of <abbr>UH<\/abbr> M\u0101noa\u2019s goal of <a href=\"https:\/\/manoa.hawaii.edu\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/manoa-2025-strategic-plan.pdf#page=25\">Excellence in Research: Advancing the Research and Creative Work Enterprise<\/a> (<span class=\"small-text\"><abbr title=\"Portable Document Format\">PDF<\/abbr><\/span>), one of four goals identified in the <a href=\"https:\/\/manoa.hawaii.edu\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/manoa-2025-strategic-plan.pdf\">2015&#8211;25 Â鶹´«Ã½<\/a> (<span class=\"small-text\"><abbr title=\"Portable Document Format\">PDF<\/abbr><\/span>), updated in December 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><abbr>UH<\/abbr> M\u0101noa John Young Museum of Art has displayed exhibit, <em>Ken Okiishi: A Model Childhood<\/em>, about the legacy of Japanese-American history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,12],"tags":[105,1507,1036,9,56],"class_list":["post-148819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-video","tag-art","tag-art-and-art-history","tag-john-young-museum-of-art","tag-uh-manoa","tag-video-2","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148819"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":152068,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148819\/revisions\/152068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}