Asian Pacific American Heritage Month

Listen to the calming sounds of water and take in the subdued palette of evergreen shrubbery embracing
the Koi Pond. The garden features stone lanterns crafted from Okazaki stone over 200 years ago, as well as a bonsai display maintained by the South Coast Bonsai Association.

As part of the forced incarceration of over 125,000 American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II, filmmaker Emiko Omori explores her family’s experience at the Poston American concentration camp. Fifty years later, she and other former inmates reflect on the personal and political consequences of the camps, offering a poetic and illuminating view of a troubling chapter in American history.

In an afternoon organized by the Asian American Pacific Islander Arts Network, ARTNOIR, and The Here And There Collective, artists, art historians, and curators discuss the ways that their identity shapes their lives and creative practices. Panelists address how artists of various diasporas navigate existing systems and band together for cultural code switching, when excluded from the art market.