Transpacific Borderlands: The Art of Japanese Diaspora in Lima, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and São Paulo

by Emily Anderson (Editor)

This catalog presents the groundbreaking exhibition, Transpacific Borderlands, which is part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a Getty-led initiative exploring Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles. Transpacific Borderlands brings together leading artists of Japanese and Latin American heritage, exploring the significance of their work as well as their complex, hybrid identities. The accompanying catalog features full-color images and essays by the exhibition’s four curators along with writings by leading scholars of immigration and diversity from across the Americas.

128 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2017

Reviews

[Frederic · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've given this one an extra star above my gut feeling, because of the importance of the work. There are nine short articles as the text, written by academics and deploying varying degrees of currently fashionable theory and jargon -- most are not bad reads, but there's more of that sort of content than I really like to see in a book like this. About three-dozen works are then illustrated in plates. But (to my knowledge) this is the first book, accompanying the first focused exhibit, to grapple with the art being produced by Japanese-Latino artists. The category is left loose, and individual artists self-identify in different ways, making it as inclusive as possible. In time, works range from Isamu Noguchi in the 1930s into this century. I'm confident that there's a lot more to be done and said on the subject, but this is a good and important first step.