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Afterlives: Japanese American Artists and the Postwar Era

Chiura Obata, Topaz War Relocation Center by Moonlight, 1943, Watercolor. From the Utah Museum of Fine Arts Permanent Collection, Gift of the Estate of Chiura Obata.

Afterlives: Japanese American Artists and the Postwar Era

An expansive, scholarly exhibition, Afterlives: Japanese American Artists and the Postwar Era considers the work produced by a generation of Japanese American artists, photographers, and designers whose lives were disrupted by Executive Order 9066 which led to the forced removal and internment of 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry, many of them American citizens, from the West Coast of the United States during World War II. The exhibition considers their work in the wake of incarceration as a form of survival, resistance and inspiration. While this injustice is a fundamentally U.S. story tied to questions of identity and belonging, the exhibition aims to draw out transpacific connections, influences and exchanges, tracing the afterlives of these histories.

By centering the work of Japanese American practitioners in a global conversation about the development of modernism during the mid-20th century, Afterlives: Japanese American Artists and the Postwar Era aims to unsettle the prevailing nationalist narratives of postwar art history, foregrounding formal, material, philosophical, and conceptual relationships. Focusing on artists whose practices disobey the presumed boundaries between form and function, community and studio, place and culture, the exhibition furthers a burgeoning global conversation that expands and offers a framework for consideration of contemporary artistic practices.

Afterlives: Japanese American Artists and the Postwar Era is organized by Clara Kim, MOCA Chief Curator & Director of Curatorial Affairs, and Kris Kuramitsu, Guest Curator, with Ariana Rizo, Curatorial Assistant, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Lead support is provided by the Henry Luce Foundation, the Teiger Foundation, and the Terra Foundation for American Art.


Major support is provided by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation.

Generous support is provided by the Ishibashi Foundation.

Exhibitions at MOCA are supported by the MOCA Fund for Exhibitions with major funding provided by Tatiana Botton, The Goodman Family Foundation, Alfred E. Mann Charities, and Alicia Miñana and Robert Lovelace. Generous funding is provided by Michael and Zelene Fowler, The Earl and Shirley Greif Foundation, Pamela and Jarl Mohn, Jonathan Segal, the Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family Foundation, and Pamela West.