Memories Beyond Barbed Wire

“Art embraces so much more than just a painting. Art is grounded fully in culture. I don’t think that you can separate it from that, and so it’s really kind of almost an indication of what’s happening culturally,” said artist Tama Takahashi.

For Takahashi, this means drawing influence from her half-Japanese heritage and the experiences of her grandparents. Her family was incarcerated during World War II in a concentration camp in Minidoka, Idaho. Takahashi’s upcoming art exhibit, Memories of Barbed Wire: Resilience in the Japanese American Community, is an emotional portrayal of the concentration camp in Minidoka used to incarcerate more than 13,000 of the 120,000 Japanese Americans imprisoned during WWII, including her own family.

“That kind of generational trauma carries forward. It left emotional traces that filtered down through generations,” said Takahashi. “So, my show really taps into that. My photographs are not documentary photos; they’re emotional expressions of pain and history that happened at Minidoka and in all the concentration camps. But also with the happy side, which is the resilience of people who went through this and came out the other side.”

Through large-scale photographs printed on vellum, two sculptures, and a video installation, Takahashi’s multimedia exhibit promises a look into the personal experiences and emotions of her family at the camp.

Her solo show runs from June 7 to July 25 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, upstairs at Paseo Nuevo. Takahashi is hosting an artist walkthrough on June 27 at 1 p.m., where she will describe her processes and meaning behind the work. 

There will also be a panel discussion on July 18 at 1 p.m., featuring Wade Nomura, president of the Santa Barbara chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League; award-winning lecturer on the history of the mass injustice perpetrated on the Japanese Americans during WWII Sam Mihara; and Mark Masaoka, Nikkei Progressives representative for the Little Tokyo Community Council.

“I’ve got four speakers, and they’re all distinguished in their area. But they don’t have exactly the same view on everything, and I think that’s going to be interesting, because you’re going to hear that even within the Japanese American community, there are some differences in the way that people look at things,” said Takahashi.

Through creating this exhibit, Takahashi described many of the emotions that coincided with her artistic process. “It is two-sided, because there was a lot of sadness, going to the camp and photographing it, and seeing the terrible conditions under which they must have lived. But at the same time, connecting with other descendants of camp survivors has been a really wonderful experience,” said Takahashi.

Takahashi spoke to the relevance of her exhibit, especially among the current environment surrounding immigrant detention and deportation. “There’s so many similarities that it’s pretty hard not to see those parallels,” said Takahashi.

Memories of Barbed Wire: Resilience in the Japanese American Community is at the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (653 Paseo Nuevo), June 7-July 25. See mcasantabarbara.org/tama-takahashi, tamatakahashi.com.

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to reflect a change of panelists on July 18.