Skokie, Dec. 05, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — In 1942, in response to the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japanese forces, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law Executive Order 9066. The law ordered the forced imprisonment of all Japanese Americans living on the west coast of the United States, which at the time had the second largest population of Japanese people living outside of Japan. Told from the point of view of Sansei (third generation) Japanese Americans, Resilience—A Sansei Sense of Legacy is an exhibition of eight artists whose work reflects on the effect of EO9066 as it resonated from generation to generation. The exhibition opens at Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center on December 15, 2024.
In the years following the retraction of EO9066 at the end of WWII, expatriate Japanese families and individuals were forced to come to terms with lost property, the injustice, shame and indignation of incarceration, and the task of re-integration into a society that had expelled them. After their release from the incarceration camps that dotted Western and Central US during the war, Japanese Americans used the phrase “shikata ga nai” – it cannot be helped – and the word “gaman” – to persevere and stay silent – to speak to their resilience against the losses they incurred at the behest of Roosevelt’s order.
Several of the artists employ traditional Japanese methods in the construction of their work, while others use iconography relating to Japanese culture as a jumping-off point for personal explorations on the subject of the incarceration camps. “Each artist in this exhibition, in their own way, expresses moments of deeply felt pain and reluctant acceptance, amid enduring silence,” said Arielle Weininger, Chief Curator of Collections and Exhibitions of Illinois Holocaust Museum. “The exhibition illustrates how art can be a powerful tool for protest, memory and healing.”
Exhibition artists are: Kristine Aono, Reiki Fuji, Wendy Maruyama, Lydia Nakashima Degarrod, Tom Nakashima, Roger Shimomura, Judy Shintani, and Jerry Takigawa.
Exhibition co-curators Jerry Takigawa and Gail Enns explain, “The Sansei generation is perhaps the last generation of Japanese American artists that can be directly connected to the WWII American concentration camp experience—making their expression particularly significant in clarity of emotion. These artists lived through the years of “gaman” or silence about the camps. That silence made a deep impression on the artists selected for Resilience.”
Details about the exhibition are available here.
A Program of ExhibitsUSA, a national division of Mid-America Arts Alliance and The National Endowment for the Arts.
Illinois Holocaust Museum’s presentation of Resilience—A Sansei Sense of Legacy is made possible with generous support from:
PRESENTING SPONSOR
National Endowment for the Arts
SUPPORTERS
Lester & Edward Anixter Family Foundation
Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation
CONTRIBUTING SPONSOR
JA Community Foundation
ADDITIONAL FUNDERS
MUFG Bank
Golder Family Foundation
Mark and Lisa Pinsky
About Illinois Holocaust Museum
Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center honors the Survivors and victims of the Holocaust and transforms history into current, relevant, and universal lessons in humanity. Through world-class exhibitions and programs, the Museum inspires individuals and organizations to remember the past and transform the future. The Museum is open Wednesday through Monday from 10:00 a.m. through 5:00 p.m. For more information, visit www.ilholocaustmuseum.org or call 847-967-4800.
About ExhibitsUSA
This exhibition is toured by ExhibitsUSA, a national program of Mid-America Arts Alliance. ExhibitsUSA sends more than twenty-five exhibitions on tour to over 100 small- and mid-sized communities every year. These exhibitions create access to an array of arts and humanities experiences, nurture the understanding of diverse cultures and art forms, and encourage the expanding depth and breadth of cultural life in local communities. For more about ExhibitsUSA, email [email protected] or visit www.eusa.org.
About Mid-America Arts Alliance
Mid-America Arts Alliance (M-AAA) strengthens and supports artists, cultural organizations, and communities throughout our region and beyond. Additional information about M-AAA is available at www.maaa.org.
About the Curators
Gail Enns is the director of the nonprofit arts management organization Celadon Arts (founded 1998, Monterey, CA). Evidenced most recently by Resilience, Enn’s curatorial focus throughout her 30-year career has included the interaction between art, community, and some of the more challenging aspects of the human condition.
Jerry Takigawa is an independent photographer, designer, writer, and the co-founder of the annual PIE (Photography + Ideas + Experience) workshop series held at the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA. A third generation Japanese American, Takigawa is a proponent of design as a tool for effecting radical shifts in human thought.
- Citizen’s Indefinite Leave