“Noguchi to Asawa” traces the impact that internment camps had on six Japanese American artists: sculptor Isamu Noguchi, furniture maker George Nakashima, sculptor Leo Amino, fiber artist Kay Sekimachi, sculptor Ruth Asawa and Fujita.
The six did not work together, nor did they form any kind of collective. Some knew others in this group, some did not. Kang said all shaped American culture and fine art, and their wartime confinement had a lasting impact on their work.
“In many histories of these artists, this period of their life is treated as an isolated, terrible, traumatic, unfortunate incident that then they moved on from,” she said. “What I was trying to trace is the vestige of that experience, to see how grief and damage and injury are still part of these works, with the beauty, with the exquisite aesthetics. You cannot disentangle them.”