Lucien Kubo

Shadows from the Past: Sansei Artists and the American Concentration Camps

Website:

https://visualartsnetworkscc.com/listing/lucien-kubo/

Biography:

Lucien Kubo has shown her work predominantly in social justice exhibitions including The Pursuit of Hope, ARRT, Santa Cruz; Endangered Species, Cabrillo College, Davis; and Generation Nexus: Peace in the Post War Era, NJAHS SF; Some Assembly Required: Race, Gender & Globalization, UCSC at California Folk Art Museum of LA; Distillations: Meditations on the JA Experience, JFK University, Berkeley. Solo exhibitions include: UCSC's Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery, Santa Cruz; the Asian Resource Center, Oakland; the Resource Center for Non-Violence, Santa Cruz. Other exhibition venues include Museum of Art & History, Santa Cruz; Sebastopol Center for the Arts; Joyce Gordon Gallery, Oakland, Heritage Foundation, SF. Kubo has received awards from Porter Gulch Review, Graphic Artists of the Year, Winners Circle, SCAL; and Cover art for Signs, Journal of Woman in Culture and Society, Rutgers University. Kubo earned her BS in Sociology from San Francisco State University and studied Studio Art at Cabrillo College. Kubo was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where her parents lived after being incarcerated at Topaz, Utah during WWII. She resides in Santa Cruz, CA. 

Artist Statement:

I am a third generation Japanese American--a Sansei. An important part of my life experience is that of my parents, their family and community of Japanese Americans who were incarcerated in concentration camps during WWII. The stories of the Japanese diaspora to this country, displacement, incarceration and community have been a common theme in most of my assemblages. One of the pieces in this exhibition, ‘Never Again is Now’, 2019, brings my family history into the present as I layered images of the American Concentration Camps and Angel Island Detention Center with those dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic, attacks on people of color, detention centers separating families and attacks on DACA, the Muslim Ban while promoting white supremacy. I like to think that my art is a part of a collective Asian voice, a vision of change in a world with compassion, equality and peace

 


Japanese American Concentration Camp, 2005  
assemblage, encaustic, found metal object from Heart Mountain dump, images, photos, 18” x 18” x 4”  

American Concentration Camp is an aerial view assemblage of the Topaz, Utah concentration camp, original barrack photos and a Dorothea Lange image of two children awaiting a bus to take them to an assembly center 

 


Far from Home, 2009 
assemblage, mixed media, photos, found objects, 17” x 11 x 4” 

Pictured with two others at the center of this assemblage, Lucien Kubo’s grandmother is standing in front of barracks in Topaz, Utah, a desert concentration camp where they were housed—far from home. 

 


Never Again is Now, 2009 
assemblage, mixed media collage, 20” x 24” x 4” 

For Lucien Kubo, this assemblage is a reminder that we must learn from past injustices. She states, “During WWII, Japanese immigrants and American citizens of Japanese descent were incarcerated in 10 concentration camps. In2004, a report released by the American Civil Liberties Union in 2004 states that after the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. government unfairly deported thousands of immigrants simply because they were from Muslim countries. And now, Latino/Mexican immigrants are being held in detention centers—families and children being separated.” Kubo comments, “Scapegoating of racial groups, leads to prejudice and violence.” 

 


Family memories from Topaz, Utah Concentration Camp, 2019 
mixed media, assemblage, collage, 16” x 12” x 3” 

Lucien Kubo uses some of the letters her mother wrote to her father in prison. She recounts, “Executive Order 9066 was issued on February 19, 1942. Within days FBI agents came to my grandparent’s home and took my grandfather away. The next day, when the family went the to see him at the immigration center in SF, he had already been put on a train to Bismarck, North Dakota, a high security Federal prison. His crime? He had been a treasurer of a Japanese community organization. He was now considered an ‘Enemy Alien’. 

 

 Yearning for Freedom and Moving Forward, 2009 
assemblage, mixed media collage, 30” x 30” 

“I made this piece to commemorate the concentration camp experience and as a final way to end the concentration camp experience for me. The ‘shide’ a zigzag paper streamer or ‘lightning wands’ are commonly used in Shinto rituals for purification and blessing. It is also used to exorcise any object that is thought to have negative energy.” 

 

 

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