Visual Dialogues: Public Art and Social Transformation
Posted March 8, 2011 by k_c_ in Events
My friend Katie Yamasaki is a really talented mural artist and will be giving a presentation this Friday, in NYC.
Her work is devoted to the idea that everyone should be free to grow and experience their lives on their own terms, liberated from a power and material-driven society that so often values things above people. By helping to provide a visual platform where different communities can have a public voice, Katie is committed to the idea that art can play a major role in social transformation.
Visual Dialogues: Public Art and Social Transformation
Friday, March 11, 6-8pm
Asian American/Asian Research Institute
25 W. 43rd Street,
(btn 5th & 6th Ave)
Room 1000
The public art projects of Katie Yamasaki have covered topics from the Japanese Internment to the militarization of inner city youth. In just 8 years since the completion of her MFA at the School of Visual Arts, her work has earned her invitations to develop public art projects in Chiapas, Mexico with the Zapatista Army for National Liberation, Santiago de Cuba, rural Appalachia, Sevilla and Barcelona, Spain, Namibia, Japan, Detroit, New Jersey, Indiana and all over New York City.
For Yamasaki, public and mural art has the unique ability to create new dialogues that challenge the evolving identities of communities in transition, communities of political and/or cultural resistance and communities of the displaced/disenfranchised. Her work, culturally and politically is woven together by the common threads of communication, transformation and liberation.
Yamasaki will share her global public art projects as well as her past and upcoming book projects, two in particular. Fish for Jimmy is a book for children which will be published in September, 2012. Based on a family story, it tells the story of two boys in the Japanese Internment Camps. It is Yamasaki’s first published book as both author/illustrator. She will also discuss Yama, the illustrated biography of her grandfather, architect Minoru Yamasaki. This story tells the tale of the Nisei experience from the perspective of her grandfather who came to be known as one of the most influential American architects of the 20th Century.
Finally, the presentation will consider the evolving role of public art and art of cultural identity in the ever-changing Asian American community.
You can see more of Katie Yamasaki’s work at
www.katieyamasaki.com
Background about the top mural at:
Arte Para Todos
Info about the second photographed mural at:
Voices Her'd
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