February 5 | Lunch and Learn with artist Emma Nishimura
Wednesday, February 5, 2025
12:30 to 1:30 PM
Free | Online | Zoom link provided upon registration
About the Program
Beneath the Surface: Stories of Kinship and Connection exhibiting artist Emma Nishimura will share insights into her research and art practice, which explore the complicated experiences of her paternal grandparents and Japanese Canadians during and after their forced incarceration in World War II. This talk highlights her work, creative processes, and reflections on navigating generational memory.
About the Artist
Based in Toronto, Emma Nishimura works with a range of media, including printmaking, photography, sculpture and installation. Her work addresses ideas of memory and loss that are rooted within family stories and inherited narratives. For the past decade, Nishimura’s research and art practice has focused on the experiences her family and thousands of other Japanese Canadians endured throughout their forced incarceration during the Second World War. Her work explores this history and the reverberations these experiences have had throughout the subsequent generations.
Nishimura has exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work is in a number of public and private collections, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Royal Ontario Museum, the Japanese Canadian National Museum and the Library of Congress. She is the recipient of the Queen Sonja Print Award 2018. Nishimura received her MFA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and her BA from the University of Guelph. She is an Assistant Professor at OCAD University.
About “Beneath the Surface: Stories of Kinship and Connection“
Beneath the Surface features the evocative works of Emma Nishimura and Gayle Uyagaqi Kabloona, who use printmaking to explore culture, family, and identity. Nishimura’s practice delves into themes of memory, loss, and resilience, focusing on her family’s experiences during the internment of Japanese Canadians in World War II. Kabloona, inspired by her Inuit heritage and artistic lineage, celebrates her identity while questioning it, blending tradition with contemporary exploration.
