Created during a summer 2019 Joan Mitchell Center Artist-in-Residency, Holding On features sacred, WWII memorial, and present-day military occupied sites in Okinawa, Japan and explores memory and affect through the genre of landscape painting. I was inspired to create this series about my ancestral homeland after observing the prop roots from banyan trees in Okinawa and how they keep holding on, regenerating and finding new routes to persist and reclaim the land around them. The works are also informed by the mythology of Kijimuna wood spirits and other Okinawan indigenous beliefs of spirit guardians of the land and sea.

Okinawa used to be the independent Ryukyu Kingdom and was seized by Japan in 1879. Following the Battle of Okinawa in WWII, the US-occupied Okinawa from 1945­–1972. It was “returned” to Japan in 1972 and is currently home to more than 70% of the US military bases in Japan despite being less than .6% of the total landmass of Japan. One of the many pressing concerns of colonization is that the US Marine Corps is in the process of building a replacement base for Futenma base (dubbed by former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as the “most dangerous base in the world”) in Henoko in the north of Okinawa. Okinawans have been vehemently protesting this for over 20 years and in February 2019, voters passed a referendum by 72% opposing the base construction. Japan and the US are disregarding the will of the people and in March 2019 they began dumping dirt into Oura Bay to make two aircraft landing strips. They are destroying the sacred sea including pristine coral reefs and the severely endangered Dugong in the process. Although I live thousands of miles away in Chicago, I want to bring awareness through my art of the beauty and rich history of Okinawa and to the unfair burden that US and Japanese national security has placed on the backs of the Okinawan people and environment.

This work has been funded in part by a 2019 DePaul University Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Summer Research Grant and a 3Arts Residency Fellowship Artist-In-Residence at the Joan Mitchell Residency.

Holding On was listed as a “Top V Weekend Picks (10/17–10/23)” by The Visualist and Bad at Sports

Holding On was on view October 18 – November 23, 2019 at FLXST Contemporary in Chicago, IL.

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