With images of hatred projected on a large piece of white paper and the sounds of screaming racial slurs, Denise Uyehara, a Los Angeles-based Japanese-American performance artist, displayed the suffering of Japanese-Americans during World War II, juxtaposing it with the discrimination Arab-Americans and Muslims experienced after Sept. 11.
The show, held in the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art Lecture Hall, consisted of excerpts from Uyehara’s most famous work, a combination of multiple art forms called the “Big Head.” The work is based on the links between the Japanese-American relocation, detention and internment during World War II and current violence against Arab-Americans, South Asians and Muslims in the United States.
The show included a projected image of a clay man. In the projected video, the clay man gets punched, trodden and torn by invisible forces, while Uyehara recounts a hate crime committed by some East Asian-American youths against a South Asian-American family.
“What does it take to hate a body? What does it hate to take a body?” Uyehara chanted in a loud whisper. The animated clay later emerged as a big head. During the show, a large piece of paper acted as a screen and symbolically connected two of Uyehara’s experiences together. The first projection on the paper, a letter composed by Uyehara’s great uncle when he was in the Rohwer Relocation Center during World War II, shifted to a symbolic veil of self-doubt and humiliation. The second experience was that of Edina Lekovic, a Muslim editor in chief of the University of California, Los Angeles’ Daily Bruin newspaper, whose journalistic integrity was questioned because of her religion. Uyehara held up paper to reflect images projected onto the wall behind; her portable screen reflected the candle-lit faces of Japanese, Arab and other Americans from a vigil videotaped on Sept. 28, 2001, at the Japanese American National Museum.
Uyehara said the ability to experience others’ pain and pleasure as one’s own motivated the creation of “Big Head.”
After Sept. 11 and the ensuing hate crimes directed toward Muslims and Arab-Americans, Uyehara was reminded of her family’s experience during World War II, she said. She recognized that she could become a conduit not just for her family history but also for the new group of citizens suddenly being scrutinized with suspicion, she said.
“It was kind of like a nightmarish feeling, and then the ancestral memory made me think, ‘Oh my God, the same thing is going to happen again.’ And I realized, this is what I’m supposed to do, as an artist: to help people remember and make sense of a very difficult time,” she said.
Uyehara began her performance-art career in 1989, and her works have appeared at art and cultural exhibitions around the world. She said she doesn’t think her performance will be available commercially in the future.
Isaac Torres, a University student, said he enjoyed the performance’s minimal words and body movements.
Steve Morozumi, ASUO Multicultural Center program adviser, said he liked the show because Uyehara was dealing with the political topics about which the academic circle is talking critically.