Upcoming Exhibition

Reclaiming the Future: The Legacy of Japanese American Incarceration

A flag in the shape of a carp fish appears in the foreground, with further carp fish banners flying in the wind in the background in a desert landscape.
Patrick Nagatani, Japanese Children’s Day Carp Banners, Paguate Village, Jackpile Mine Uranium Tailings, Laguna Pueblo Reservation, New Mexico, 1990, chromogenic print, 20 x 24 in. Collection of the New Mexico Museum of Art. Gift of anonymous donor, 1997 (1997.61.4). © Patrick Nagatani. Photo by Cameron Gay

Reclaiming the Future: The Legacy of Japanese American Incarceration brings together a multigenerational group of Japanese and Japanese American artists whose works confront one of the darkest chapters in U.S. history: the forced incarceration of over 120,000 people of Japanese descent during World War II, including at four camps in New Mexico. From Ruth Asawa’s delicate wire sculptures to Patrick Nagatani’s photographic meditations and new works by contemporary voices, the exhibition examines displacement, resilience, and intergenerational memory. These artists reimagine the landscapes of confinement and give form to stories long silenced. Through acts of remembrance and speculative imagining, the exhibition calls on us to recognize injustice’s enduring impact while envisioning a more just and inclusive future.