“Representing and Resisting Historical Injustices through Art” will be a panel of artists from diverse communities joining featured artist John Matsunaga in a conversation about how they have used their artistic practices to engage the historical injustices which have challenged their communities.  The artists Nikki McComb, Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay, and Alessandra Williams will bring the experiences of not only diverse communities, but also various art forms into this conversation.​​

Nikki McComb’s public safety campaign titled  #ENOUGH uses art as a catalyst for change and social disruption. Taking on the trenchant problem of illegal firearms, McComb uses photographs and video to reach people from the street level to the legislative arena and to help provide communities an outlet where they feel safe enough to seek help, empowered enough to give help, provoked enough to work harder to unify, and unified enough to make change collectively through art. For seventeen years, McComb has applied her artistic interests and skills to working relentlessly in North Minneapolis and surrounding communities in youth and family achievement. In addition to being an art educator, she has organized exhibitions, including Art Is My Weapon, a program whereby local artists select decommissioned guns to then create new work for display. McComb is The Creative Community Coordinator at Pillsbury United Communities She is also a 2017 recipient of The Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, a 2016 recipient of a Micro Grant for photography and a 2014 and 2015 recipient of several community leadership awards.

Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay is a Lao American writer. She was born in a refugee camp in Nongkhai, Thailand and immigrated to Minnesota in 1984. Because of her unique background, her work is focused on creating tools and spaces for the amplification of refugee voices through poetry, theater, and experimental cultural production. Her poems have been published in literary journals, magazines, coffee sleeves and train platforms. Her plays have been presented by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, Theater Mu, Consortium of Asian American Theater Artists, and Theater Unbound. She is a Many Voices fellow in playwriting, a Loft Literary Center Spoken Word Immersion fellow, a New Performance theater fellow, a VERVE Grant for Spoken Word Poets recipient, a Forecast Public Arts Early Artist grant recipient, and an Aspen Ideas Bush Foundation scholar. Her work has been possible due to support from the John S. and James L Knight Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Bush Foundation, Joyce Foundation, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, and the MN State Arts Board. She is best known for her award-winning play KUNG FU ZOMBIES VS CANNIBALS (Theater Mu) and is developing two more plays for the KUNG FU ZOMBIEVERSE anthology of stage works. Get to know her at www.SaymoukdaTheRefugenius.com and keep up with her @REFUGENIUS.

Alessandra Williams is an educator, activist, and artist, originally from Minneapolis. Her culture and performance Ph.D. at UCLA focused on feminist, queer of color theory and Afro-Asian alliances through ethnographic studies of Ananya Chatterjea and the Minneapolis-based Ananya Dance Theatre and David Rousseve and the Los Angeles-based REALITY dance company. She also completed her B.A. in American Studies and Theatre and Dance at Macalester College and her community organizing earned her the Grassroots Solutions Organizer of the Year Award. Beginning in 2006, she joined Ananya Dance Theatre as an artist and has since danced in the company’s Ashesh Barsha (2009), Moreechika (2012), Roktim (2014), Horidraa (2015), and is currently touring Shyamali (2016) to Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, New York, Los Angeles, Hawaii, and Philadelphia. She enjoys teaching performance studies courses and vinyasa yoga, collaborating with the East Side Freedom Library, being a student of West African-based movement, and admiring time and space with loved ones in the Twin Cities, Louisiana, Ganta City, Liberia, and Los Angeles.

*This panel will be part of the larger photography exhibition “Nidoto Nai Yoni: Forgetting and Remembering the Wartime Incarceration of Japanese Americans” by artist John Matsunaga.

Artist Statement: This exhibit presents photographs of the physical remnants of the ten American concentration camps that were used to incarcerate Japanese Americans during World War II. In 1942, approximately 110,000 Japanese Americans that lived within the western United States were forcibly removed from their homes, imprisoned in American concentration camps for up to four years, and denied their constitutional rights because of their Japanese ancestry.  This body of work explores the themes of memory and forgetting, particularly in regards to the loss in our understanding of this history that will inevitably occur when the last of those who went through this experience pass away and their lived memories vanish.

Biography: John Matsunaga is a Minneapolis based visual artist, educator, and activist.  His work in the visual arts explores Asian American and Japanese American history, identity, and experience.  He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Twin Cities chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League and is a member of its education committee.  He also teaches in the Asian American Studies program at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Location: East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier Street, St. Paul, MN 55106

Dates:

• On View: January 26 – February 24, 2018
• Opening Reception: Friday, January 26, 6:30-8:30 p.m.

Other Related Programming:

• Film Screening and Discussion: Monday, February 19, 2018, 7:00-9:00 p.m. And Then They Came for Us(2017), a film by Abby Ginzberg and Ken Schneider. Seventy-five years ago, Executive Order 9066 paved the way to the profound violation of constitutional rights that resulted in the forced incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans. Featuring George Takei and many others who were incarcerated, as well as newly rediscovered photographs of Dorothea Lange, And Then They Came for Us brings history into the present, retelling this difficult story and following Japanese American activists as they speak out against the Muslim registry and travel ban. A post-screening discussion will be led by Yuichiro Onishi, Associate Professor of African American and African Studies and Asian American Studies, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Acknowledgments: John Matsunaga is a fiscal year 2017 recipient of an Artist Initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board.  This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

Additional funding for this exhibit is provided by the Twin Cities Japanese American Citizens League through the Les and Karen Suzukamo Fund, the Donald S. Maeda Fund, and the Helen Tsuchiya Fund. Other funding is provided by the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota and Historical Injustices: The Working Group at the University of MN: https://ias.umn.edu/collaboratives.

The East Side Freedom Library would like to thank the F.R. Bigelow Foundation, the Marbrook Foundation, and the McNeeley Foundation for making events and programs like this possible.

More information: 

For more information regarding the exhibit and related programming please visit: https://eastsidefreedomlibrary.org////