Asian American Studies Commons^™

War Baby / Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art, Laura Kina, Wei Ming Dariotis

Laura Kina

War Baby / Love Child examines hybrid Asian American identity through a collection of essays, artworks, and interviews at the intersection of critical mixed race studies and contemporary art. The book pairs artwork and interviews with nineteen emerging, mid-career, and established mixed race/mixed heritage Asian American artists, including Li-lan and Kip Fulbeck, with scholarly essays exploring such topics as Vietnamese Amerasians, Korean transracial adoptions, and multiethnic Hawai’i. As an increasingly ethnically ambiguous Asian American generation is coming of age in an era of “optional identity,” this collection brings together first-person perspectives and a wider scholarly context to shed light on …

Cover Image - "Devon Avenue Sampler", Laura Kina

Laura Kina

Laura Kina "Devon Avenue Sampler" acrylic on fabric, 53x77", 2009. To view the cover and learn about Cathy's book see: http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/2113_reg.html To see the Devon Avenue Sampler series: http://www.laurakina.com/devon.html

Complete Newspaper, Magazine, Tv, Radio, Podcast, And Blog Press Coverage, Laura Kina

Laura Kina

Visit the artist website for a comprehensive list of popular press coverage from 2002-present: http://www.laurakina.com/press.html

Exhibition Essay And Retrospective - "Laura Kina: A Many-Splendored Thing", Laura Kina

Laura Kina

Larry Lee. “Laura Kina: A Many-Splendored Thing.” Foundation for Asian American Independent Media 15th Annual Asian American Showcase catalogue. 2010. April 2 - May 30, 2010 Gene Siskel Film Center A retrospective featuring over thirty selected paintings, drawings and textiles (1995-present) from her Refrigerator, Hapa Soap Opera, Loving, Aloha Dreams, and Devon Avenue Sampler series as wellas some early and new works on exhibit for the first time. Kina's art collectively embraces "ikigai" or the Japanese belief of "a sense of life worth living" and reflects her "postcolonial pop aesthetic" as a multiracial Okinawan Jewish artist/educator/scholar living in a South …

Cover Image And Featured Artist - Zeek: A Jewish Journal Of Thought And Culture, Laura Kina

Laura Kina

Kina, Laura “Sugar.” ZEEK: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture. Winter 2010. Cover image and p.62-65.

Exhibition Catalogue Essay And Artwork - "Half Yella: Embracing Ethno-Racial Ambiguity", Laura Kina

Laura Kina

"Half Yella: Embracing Ethno-racial Ambiguity" essay and artwork featured in Embracing Ambiguities: Faces of the Future (exhibition catalogue). Cal State Fullerton University, Fullerton Main Art Gallery, 2010.

“Embracing Ambiguity: Faces of the Future,” features artwork by 10 multicultural artists living and working in the United States who are searching for new ways to define identity. Through painting, sculpture, video and mixed media, these artists attempt to answer the question, “What are you?”

The artists are:

Nzuji De Magalhaes, who combines African and American art forms to depict issues of stereotype, myth, ethnicity and politics.

Kip Fulbeck, artist, photographer, filmmaker and …

Art Series - Sugar, Laura Kina

Laura Kina

Set during the 1920’s-1940’s, Laura Kina’s SUGAR paintings (2010-present) recall obake ghost stories and feature Japanese and Okinawan picture brides turned machete carrying sugar cane plantation field laborers on the Big Island of Hawaii. Kina’s paintings take us into a beautiful yet grueling world of manual labor, cane field fires and flumes. View the series: http://www.laurakina.com/sugar.html

Art Series - Devon Avenue Sampler, Laura Kina

Laura Kina

Devon Avenue Sampler (2009-2011) is a portrait of a diasporic South Asian/Jewish community in Chicago, IL. This textile series, which uses indigo dye and khadi fabric, was hand embroidered by artisans from a fair trade women’s organization in Mumbai, India. View the series: http://www.laurakina.com/devon.html

Exhibition Catalogue - "Indigo: Laura Kina And Shelly Jyoti", Laura Kina

Laura Kina

Indigo: Laura Kina and Shelly Jyoti The torrid history of Indigo is reimagined by artists from Chicago, USA and Gujarat, India. Indigo: Laura Kina and Shelly Jyoti presents complementary bodies of artwork by Indian artist Shelly Jyoti and US artist Laura Kina in a range of media including hand-embroidery on khadi fabric, indigo resist dyeing, Sanskrit calligraphy and mixed-media on canvas. The narrative threads running throughout the artists’ work evoke India’s colonial history, stories of immigration, and the tensions and transformations of cultures evolving in a changing world. This traveling exhibition was featured in three venues in India in 2009-2010 …

Art Series - Aloha Dreams, Laura Kina

Laura Kina

Aloha Dreams (2007) In this mixed media painting series and installation, Kina examines her Orientalist impulse for heritage tourism. Looking nostalgically at her family’s history as Okinawan sugar cane plantation workers on the Big Island of Hawaii, she ultimately finds herself through mediated pop images of paradise and in the very real space of a Midwestern Vietnamese nail salon. View the series: http://www.laurakina.com/aloha.html

Art Series - Loving, Laura Kina

Laura Kina

Loving (2006) Inspired by the 1967 Supreme Court Case, Loving v. Virginia, that overturned this nation’s last anti-miscegenation law, Kina examines issues of color in black and white. Kina drew life-size charcoal portraits of ten “Bi-Racial Baby Boomers” as representative of the larger mixed race community and movement in the United States. To view series: http://www.laurakina.com/artwork.html

Art Series - Hapa Soap Opera, Laura Kina

Laura Kina

Hapa Soap Opera (2003) There’s romance in the air in these love triangles featuring an all hapa cast. Drawing inspiration from Bollywood movie posters, Kina painted large-scale portraits of mixed Asian Americans from across the United States. View the series: http://www.laurakina.com/hapa.html