Roger Shimomura
From Provisions
Contents |
Questions for the Artist:
Provisions Library: What early memories or experiences motivated your engagement with social change?
Roger Shimomura: In retrospect it was probably my first memories of life which was spent in a WWII internment camp for Japanese Americans. During my early career as an artist, it became apparent to me that the gravity of that experience might be expressed in my artwork.
PL:Who are key influences in your life and why?
RS:The key influence in my life has been my paternal grandmother, who was the immigrant and matriarchal figure in our family. She had a colorful history prior to emigration from Japan, then recorded her story in this country in diaries maintained for 56 years, writing about her experiences as a midwife to over 1,000 babies in America, coming out of retirement to deliver me in 1939.
PL: What books, artworks, films, music, etc. have been essential to you?
RS: Books by postwar Japanese and American authors, art from the New York Pop and Calilfornia Funk ceramics movements, foreign films,music from the Post Bop Jazz period and contemporary Japanese popular music.
PL: What are you working on now?
RS: A series of paintings based upon the internment event. The show will be called “Minidoka on my Mind” and it will be seen in my next solo exhibition at the Greg Kucera Gallery, in Seattle.
PL: How has the art world reacted to the content of your work? Do you feel that your work has been depoliticized/overpoliticized/exoticized/misinterpreted?
RS: I feel that the reaction to the work has usually been respectful and “correct” in its response, however, what is unknown is the degree of impact or significance to the audience, beyond the exhibition.
PL: Terms like "artist" and "activist" are subjective terms. Where do you see the overlap, if any? Do you draw strict separations between the two, or do you see them as inseparable?"
RS: For some, like myself, they are inseparable, however I believe that for most, they are and probably should be separate.
About the Artist
"Like his grandmother's diaries, Roger Shimomura's paintings are simple and emotionally objective. The artist abandoned the appropriation of traditional Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints he had used in earlier work to adopt a graphically strong style that reflects his interest in American comic books. The simplified forms, stark black outlines, and brilliant colors all make reference to Shimomura's interest in Pop Art. Comic icons like Superman coexist with Sumo wrestlers, brick walls reveal shoji screens, and chopsticks are used to eat bologna -- all conveying the experience of living in two cultural worlds.
While the works are poignant in nature, Shimomura often adds a twist of unexpected irony. For example, the illustration for December 7, 1942 depicts a bowl of udon noodles juxtaposed with a Baby Ruth® candy bar. The more sober corresponding diary entry refers to the conflict many Japanese Americans felt about the war: 'Those of us who share the virtues of both countries pray for the earliest possible peace.'"
--From Review of An American Diary: Paintings and Prints by Roger Shimomura, from Resource Library Magazine
"I have often told my students that if making art is of paramount importance in their lives and that if they are willing to commit themselves to hard work and maintaining an engaged mind, they will eventually be able to free themselves o f everything they learned about art. I know from my experience that I have found this to be true.
"After years of studious concern over content, I feel that I have either reached or sunk to a level of security where ideas for my work flow, unconscionably. It seems that at some point I no longer felt compelled to project my own point of view toward the things that concerned me. I found myself more interested in creating a visual forum that expressed ironic and contradictory attitudes towards these concerns.
"This direction required many new resources and led me to practicing a form of self-legalized visual larceny. Using images from my past and immediate environments, from earlier and current work and using them as cultural metaphors, I became a dispassionate viewer of my own layering system."
--Statements by Roger Shimomura, from Greg Kucera Gallery
More about the Internment of Japanese-Americans
Personal Justice Denied: The Report on the Commission of the Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians Online Book
With the signing of Executive Order 9066, the course of the President and the War Department was set. American citizens of Japanese ancestry would be required to move from the West Coast on the basis of wartime military necessity, and the way was open to move any other group the military thought necessary.
Internment of Japanese-Americans
During World War II, American enthusiasm for fighting the overseas enemy surged, but so did fear of an "enemy within." After the December 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, the United States declared war on Japan and joined the Allied forces in World War II. Rumors of sabotage and espionage by Japanese-Americans ran rampant. These raged despite an FBI investigation that showed the fears to be groundless.
More images from Roger Shimomura
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| August 14, 1943 (ironing board) | November 28, 1942 (muddy tracks) | April 28, 1942 (hand plugging ears) |
