December 7, 2024 - February 22, 2025 
Opening Reception Hours: 6 PM - 9 PM, Saturday, December 7th, 2024

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Hawthorn Contemporary is pleased to announce the opening exhibition of December 7, 1941 - February 22, 2025, featuring works by Milwaukee-based artist Kevin Miyazaki.

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Kevin Miyazaki’s exhibition is an homage to his grandfather, who was labeled as an “enemy alien” and arrested on December 7, 1941. Miyazaki transformed the gallery space for viewers to confront the dark American history during World War II when more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned in concentration camps. 

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Japanese American poet Brandon Shimoda has written a poem especially for the exhibition, which will be available as a takeaway on letterpress cards at the gallery.

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"If you consider service to the country as true Americanism and disregard the superficialities that are always present in the distinctions between races and nationalities, you will realize that no matter how different may be your blood and your physiognomy, you will be accepted as a real American." - Carl Shintaro Miyazaki, 1935

My grandfather, Carl Shintaro Miyazaki, emigrated alone from Japan in 1899, leaving his home in Kumamoto City and arriving in Seattle at the age of 16. He learned English, put himself through high school and business college, married, had a family and become an important community leader in Tacoma. He had lived in the United States for 42 years by December 7, 1941, the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in the U.S. Territory of Hawai’i. That night, he was arrested in his home.

 

Immigrants from Asian countries, even those who had called the U.S. home for decades, were not legally allowed to become naturalized citizens. My grandfather was held in a series of Department of Justice camps for “enemy aliens,” which imprisoned business and community leaders, priests, journalists and teachers, both from the West Coast and from Hawai’i. My father, his three siblings and my grandmother, Matsuko Matsukawa Miyazaki, were incarcerated in three consecutive camps during the war and were only reunited with my grandfather 18 months after his arrest. He was never found guilty of a crime.

 

This work continues my interest in my family history and how it has been shaped in part by political acts, racism and societal fear. Sadly, the incarceration of Japanese Americans and their loss of civil liberties is always relevant, and perhaps now than ever."

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Kevin J. Miyazaki is an artist and photographer based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His artwork focuses on issues of identity, memory and place, often addressing family history and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War ll. Miyazaki was born and raised in suburban Milwaukee, physically and culturally far from ancestral roots in Japan, Hawaii and Washington state. His artwork have been exhibited at venues including The Museum of Wisconsin Art, Haggerty Museum of Art, Jewish Museum Milwaukee, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Griffin Museum of Photography, The Center for Photography at Woodstock and the Hyde Park Art Center. His editorial publication clients include Smithsonian, Architectural Digest, The New York Times, Rizzoli and Knopf.

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