Henry Sugimoto, My Papa, ca.1943. Oil on canvas. Collection Japanese American National Museum (JANM), gift of Madeleine Sugimoto and Naomi Tagawa. Courtesy JANM

Afterlives: Japanese American Artists and the Postwar Era explores a generation of artists, photographers, and architects whose lives were disrupted by Executive Order 9066, issued in February 1942, which justified the forced removal and internment of over 120,000 Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast. In this group exhibition, curators Clara Kim and Kris Kuramitsu consider the work produced in the wake of the Japanese American incarceration as a form of survival, resistance, and inspiration. 

Isamu Noguchi, This Tortured Earth, 1942–43/1963. Bronze. Collection Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden. © Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS).

Featuring approximately 200 objects across all media, Afterlives will include work by renowned artists such as sculptor Ruth Asawa, architect George Nakashima, abstract painter Miyoko Ito, sculptor Isamu Noguchi, photographer Toyo Miyatake, and fiber artist Kay Sekimachi. Their work will appear alongside that of lesser-known historical artists including Isami Doi, Saburo Hasegawa, Alice Kagawa Parrott, Miné Okubo, and Shinkichi Tajiri. The exhibition traces transpacific influences and practices that transcend disciplinary boundaries, illuminating complex histories of exchange and connection. Historical figures will be in dialogue with contemporary practitioners such as Kelly Akashi, Leonor Antunes, David Horvitz, Glenn Kaino, Ken Okiishi, and Bruce Yonemoto, whose work engages Japanese American personal and communal histories of intergenerational trauma, friendship, and connection.

Bruce and Norman Yonemoto, Framed, 1989 (still). Two-channel video and installation. Courtesy Bruce Yonemoto

Los Angeles is home to the largest Japanese American population in the continental US. Given MOCA’s location within and proximity to the Little Tokyo Historic District, the exhibition will activate relationships with neighboring cultural and community organizations. Contributors to the catalogue include Kristen Hayashi, Ana Iwataki, Mark D. Johnson, Namiko Kunimoto, Yasufumi Nakamori, Jenni Sorkin, and Bert Winther-Tamaki, alongside artist biographies and an illustrated chronology.

Clara Kim is Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA). At MOCA, she curated Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of Birth of Freedom (2023–24), which traveled to Museo Guggenheim Bilbao and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and Mapping an Art World: Los Angeles in the 1970s–80s (2023–24). A Los Angeles native, Kim joined MOCA from Tate Modern (London), where she was the Daskalopoulos Senior Curator of International Art (2016–22). Charged with expanding Tate’s international art collection from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, she also organized a survey exhibition on Steve McQueen and helmed Kara Walker’s lauded 2019 Turbine Hall commission. Previously, Kim served as Senior Curator of Visual Arts at the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) and as Gallery Director and Curator at the Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT) (Los Angeles). She sits on the board of the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art (CIMAM) and the advisory boards of Contempo, Stuart Collection, Villa Aurora, and East of Borneo.

Kris Kuramitsu was hired as Research Curator for Afterlives: Japanese American Artists and the Postwar Era and worked with the MOCA team to organize four research sessions with art historians, curators, artists, and artists’ estates in spring 2024. She will serve as cocurator for the exhibition. Kuramitsu is an independent curator and Adjunct Professor of Art History at Harvey Mudd College (Claremont, CA). Her curatorial projects include exhibitions such as Drawing the Line: Japanese American Art, Design, and Activism in Post-War Los Angeles (2012) and Transpacific Borderlands: The Art of Japanese Diaspora in Lima, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and São Paulo (2017), both at the Japanese American National Museum (Los Angeles); Matsumi Kanemitsu: Metamorphic Effects (2014) at The Mistake Room (Los Angeles); and my hands are monsters who believe in magic (forthcoming, 2025) at the Armory Center for the Arts (Pasadena), highlighting the work of an emerging generation of Asian American photographers.

Daisy Nam, Diego Villalobos, Jeanne Gerrity, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts