Camouflage Net Project (series)
In 1942, Dorothea Lange was commissioned by the US Government to document the lives of Japanese-Americans, incarcerated at Manzanar Relocation Center. Several of those photos showed Nisei men and women weaving camouflage nets, a kind of camp labor for the US Army. Upon seeing those photos 73 years later, my understanding of camp labor was overturned. I was intrigued by this handiwork and intended to connect my working hand to that of my incarcerated community, but with the materiality of kimono fabric to send pride of heritage back to a time of shame of trauma. As camouflage protects people and objects by blending them into their surroundings, this piece represents a discrimination filter for today, through which we see the true nature of people as interconnected with each other and the world.
The Camouflage Net Project has evolved from connecting the mass removal of Japanese Americans to the Muslim Ban in 2017, to JA incarceration with asylum seekers at the US southern border with focus on incarcerated JA children with child asylum seekers. The net has been installed site-specifically to a wide range of exhibition spaces, from outdoor public interventions to gallery spaces.
