Artist Reception - Fault Lines: The Japanese American Experience by Sandra Honda

Fault Lines: The Japanese American Experience by Sandra Honda is up now at the Adell McMillan gallery. Come explore the stunning work spanning countless mediums.

A reception is planned on February 2nd @ 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. We hope you stop by, meet the artist, and have some food! Follow @uovisualarts for more details.

Sandra Honda’s work is on view until February 4th. You can check out more of the artist’s work at @sandrahondaart on Instagram.

Artist Statement:

I am a self-taught interdisciplinary visual artist and writer. I am Japanese American. In my drawings, paintings, photographs, and 2D and 3D assemblages and installations, I interrogate what it means to be Asian and American in today’s America. Today is a reflection of the past and a lesson toward the future. In the past, Japanese Americans were subjected to the trauma of ethnically-based, mass incarceration during World War II. Growing up, it was important to my parents and grandparents, all of whom were in the concentration camps, and to the US government for me to fit seamlessly into my school, my neighborhood and eventually my marriage and professional life. In the process, the Japanese part of my identity faded though deeply cherished. Through art, I work to reclaim my identity, excavating and rebuilding self while excavating and rebuilding layers of ink on paper drawings. I dig and tear into paper, always in a back-and-forth conversation between that which is random and that which is intentional. These works very often begin with poetry I write.  

But my work is not just about me, it is about an urgency for the moment and future. We sit at this critical juncture when we must not look away from systemic racism and a time when we must move toward true democracy and not away. I do my art to build understandings of the past as present and future. My hope is that these understandings in some small way help us make better choices going forward.