Bruce Yonemoto
““NOT SKIN OR COLOR” paraphrases Daniel Inouye's invocation: "Americanism is not a matter of skin or color." February 2017 marked 75 years since the signing of a presidential executive order that sent nearly 120,000 innocent Japanese Americans to internment camps. Executive Order 9066 changed the lives of all of my relatives including my parents who were American citizens. They were all imprisoned for the “crime” of being Japanese American.
My work is driven by my personal narrative and the interpretation of cultural and historical events of our time. I was raised in the Santa Clara Valley (now Silicon Valley), the second of four sons of Japanese Americans interned during WWII by the American government. This life-changing event is the generative source of my interest in communities of displaced people. For decades I have made films, installations, and sculptures which appropriate conventions of narrative film and television in order to include minority histories that have been systematically excluded.
Often these communities, who find themselves thrust into a new and different culture, are initially invisible and then frequently become targets. In spite of this, and against all odds they strive to distinguish and empower themselves.”
BIO
Bruce Yonemoto work's as a video and digital media installation artist, educator, writer and curator positions itself within the overlapping intersections of art and commerce, of the gallery world and the television screen. Yonemoto believes that the composition of mass media has become a new historical site of the domination of human behavior. Yonemoto has been honored with numerous awards and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Film Institute, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Maya Deren Award for Experimental Film and Video.
OWN WORDS
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