Detention/Resistance: Japanese American and Latinx Histories of Incarceration - Asian Pacific Islander Latinx Festival 

Featured speakers: Shizu Saldamando, Kazuma Julio Cesar Naganuma, and Jesus Barraza.
Moderated by Clement Hanami, Art Director at the Japanese American National Museum

From Spanish colonial missions to WWII concentration camps to present day ICE run “family detention centers,” the history of the U.S. is marked by mass incarceration due to racism and xenophobia. In 1942, Crystal City detention facility opened in south Texas as one of the many sites around the U.S. used to incarcerate those of Japanese ancestry during WWII. Unique to Crystal City, many of these internees had been deported from Latin America to the U.S. This panel of Japanese American and Latinx artists and experts will speak not only to these communities' connected histories of violence and displacement, but also to the interwoven stories of resistance and community power that were built out of these times of pressure.

Organized in collaboration with the Japanese American National Museum

Celebrate Asian and Pacific Islander Latinx Festival at MOLAA as we explore the instances of cultural synthesis between Asian, Pacific Islander & Latinx Communities in the US and throughout Latin America. We examine these narratives throughout the month of May in partnership with the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) and the Pacific Island Ethnic Art Museum (PIEAM). 

Clement Hanami

Clement Hanami is a Japanese-American artist and the Vice President of Exhibitions and Art Director at the Japanese American National Museum. He grew up in the predominantly Latino, California suburb of East Los Angeles. His mother was a hibakusha, or atomic bomb survivor and his father was a World War II evacuee. He received his M.F.A. from the University of California Los Angeles in Studio Art with a specialization in New Genres. His work has been exhibited in California and New York and has been seen at The Geffen Contemporary at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Armory Center for the Arts, John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, California Museum of Photography, Long Beach Museum of Art, AFI National Video Festival, Santa Monica Museum of Art, KCET Independent Eye, and Westwind Magazine.

Shizu Saldamando

Shizu Saldamando was born and raised in San Francisco’s Mission District. She has been living and working in LA since 1996. She received her B.A. from UCLA’s School of Arts and Architecture and her M.F.A. from California Institute of the Arts. Her drawings, paintings, sculptures, and videos have been exhibited both locally and internationally and experiment with a broad range of surfaces and materials. Saldamando’s practice employs tattooing, video, painting and drawing on canvas, wood, paper, and and cloth, and functions as homage, as well as documentation, of friends within subcultures around the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Her Japanese American family (originally from Boyle Heights, Los Angeles) was imprisoned in the Santa Anita Race Track and then Rohwer Arkansas during WWII. Her Mexican American Family is from Nogales Arizona.

Kazumu Julio César Naganuma

Kazumu Julio César Naganuma is the youngest of Iwaichi and Isoka Naganuma's eight children and was born in Callao, Peru. At 20 months, he and his family were kidnapped by the FBI and imprisoned at the Department of Justice Crystal City, Texas concentration camp from March 1944 to September 1947. Attorney Wayne Collins and Reverend Fukuda of the Konko Church were responsible for the release of the family and stopped their deportation back to Peru. Starting as an illustrator and a designer, Naganuma formed nddCreative, a design and communication firm in 1968. Now, as the Creative Director and semi-retired, he donates most of his services to his community. He is married with a daughter, two sons and a granddaughter.

Jesús Barraza

Jesús Barraza is an interdisciplinary artist with a MFA in Social Practice and a Masters in Visual Critical Studies from California College of the Arts. He holds a BA in Raza Studies from San Francisco State University. He is a co-founder of Dignidad Rebelde a graphic arts collaboration that produces screen prints, political posters and multimedia projects and a member of JustSeeds Artists Cooperative a decentralized group of political artists based in Canada, the United States and Mexico. From 2003-2010 he was a partner at Tumis design studio where he worked as web developer, graphic designer and project manager. In 2003 he was a co-founder of the screen printing studio Taller Tupac Amaru that produced political posters and fine art prints. He is currently a lecturer in the Ethnic Studies department at UC Berkeley.