Welcome to session #2 of the online space Migratory Times, “Silhouettes.”
Silhouettes are made by amateurs, artists, alike, and even cast as a shadow in the everyday. A silhouette is a shadow, profile, miniature cuttings, shadow portrait, illuminating a relationship between light and dark. Utilized by artists and activists alike, the mobilization of the silhouette in the visual has, as described by Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, the capability to image race and “otherness.” Some silhouettes are iconic – where the relationship between the light and dark have captured local and global imaginaries. Kara Walker’s paper silhouettes tell a story of the US south as one shaped by violence, both sexual and racial. The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, an association formed in the 1970s, drew awareness to the disappearances occurring during the Argentinian dictatorship (1976 – 1983). Through shadows, the place with light and dark, outlines, silhouettes speak. As this session illuminates, silhouettes manifest in intentional and unintentional actions by artists, community members, scholars, and producers. The image that is created through the interplay and production of light and dark, speaks to coloniality and oppression. As described by Maria Lugones, “Given the coloniality of power, I think we can also say that having a dark and a light side is characteristic of the co-construction of the coloniality of power and the colonial/modern gender system” (2007).
This session includes events that occurred since 2017. It includes a Salon of the Institute of (Im)Possible Subjects with Pedro Pablo Gomez, that occurred in March 2017 – transcripts and audio of the salon are featured. This session also features pedagogical conversation, a Salon with the Institute of (Im)Possible Subjects – Silhouettes: Migration, (Un)Documented, and Pedagogies, where IiS members Fukushima and Benfield facilitated discussions surrounding the work of Sonia Guiñansaca and artist and muralist Ruby Chacón, and invited Crystal Baik, Jose Manuel Cortez, Cindy Cruz, Marie Sarita Gaytan and Juan Herrera. Silhouettes include the contributions of the artist Kakyoung Lee and her work from the “Barbed Wire Series” which consists of a series of prints, multi-channel moving-image installation, and a cat’s cradle shadow installation. Stills from Kiri Dalena’s Arrays of Evidence Installation, are showcased, in which this project was also contributor to the Migratory Times Project. Also included are images and the video, “Christmas in our Hearts” by RESBAK (RESpond and Break the silence Against the Killings), a collective of artists, media practitioners, and cultural workers that unite to condemn in the strongest possible terms the Duterte regime’s brutal war on drugs. In the Spirit of Itzpaplotl, Venceremos, introduces a feminist collaboration between artist and painter, Ruby Chacón, photographs by Flor Olivo, and feminist scholarly research by Dr. Sonya Alemán. Additionally, featured video and images produced through “Women in Migration” (2017) which consisted of a collaboration between the Institute of (Im)Possible Subjects (IiS) with the University of Utah Museum of Fine Arts A.C.M.E. session featuring IiS members Dalida Maria Benfield, Damali Abrams, and Annie Isabel Fukushima, and collaborations with UMFA Jorge Rojas and Emily Izzo and Utah community members Romeo Jackson, Maria, Yehemy, Veronica, Alejandra, Ashley, Jean, Alex, Akiva, Kylee, Andrew, and Christina. Therefore, Silhouettes is an invitation to scholars, artists, visual producers, the everyday person, to submit works that speak to the coloniality and oppression through the silhouette.
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Session #2
Session #2: Silhouettes
Rose Nieda
Rose Nieda was eighty-two years old when her oral history began being recoded in May of 2005. And, over the course of a year ten interviews were recorded. Rose, tells us her experience of what it was like to be “Japanese” during this time in the United States. She begins her story with her childhood. Telling us where she was born and the first hardship in her life. The death of her parents at the age of four. She was then adopted by two Japanese-American immigrants who provided her a framework with which to build her life. She recall the early years and the importance of imagination. Most of her time was spent in the field behind her house where they would fashion bits of timber into various toys. She also remembers turning Coca-Cola bottle caps into police badges. He lessons in Japanese came through rhymes and sing-song limericks. Saturday school was something she was also expected to attend; even though she disliked it. One of the things she laughed about was, “walking 2-miles each day to and from school.” Before she was to enter college Pearl Harbor happened and Executive 9066 was passed. She and her family would spend their time in two camps Pinedale Assembly Center in California then Tule Lake. Much of her time was spent keeping her head down to get by but she also formed friendships that would remain throughout her years. Upon her release years later she worked an odd number of jobs and was able to just scrape by. She eventually married and had children of her own. It is through her oral story that we are better able to connect to certain thoughts and impressions she might have by the expressions on her face. I liked that a seemingly coy-look would cross her features whenever she talked about something that brought her joy. A memory that shaped her into the individual she was. Rose would also close her eyes at points in her story as if connecting loose ends or retracing a now dark path. To me her answers seemed matter-of-fact. Her perception wasn’t exactly as it was but regardless this was her tale to tell. Over the course of my viewing I kept thinking the same through that Rose had been through much. And even thought she was an American citizen from an American-city, town, and suburb. Society treated her as an alien. At one point in the interview process she speaks about that overwhelming feeling.
https://www.tellingstories.org/internment/nieda_rose/index.html