Artist Statement:

I am a fourth generation Japanese American (yonsei) living in Marin County, California which is 80% Caucasian. Growing up with both grandparents on each side of my family interned during World War II, I was constantly being educated about segregation and how even though both my grandparents were born in the United States, people could just stick me in the category of “Asian”. With the color of my skin not in my favor, I never made a lot of friends in my community and constantly struggled with fitting in with a majority white crowd. My piece reveals my deepest struggles with how people constantly judged me the color of their skin, and I explored what it meant to be American for me.