C. Emerson Fine Arts :: Accomplice May 2

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Accomplice May 2- 31, 2008

Yoko Nogami, I Got Too Big, 2'x4', oil on birch panel

Yoko Nogami

The United States of America: the big melting pot of culture and race, this ideal place of freedom and peace, the poster child of the United Nations. This is my home, I think. Ironically, as a working permanent resident in this country, I have never been made aware or before experienced the need to be Japanese, more specifically, a Japanese woman and mother.

My approach to making art, both in the traditional medium of painting and drawing, as well as in video performance projects, relies heavily on this concept of disconnect and displacement, a constant search for
what and where home maybe for me. In a transient world, this sense of displacement is probably not a rare experience. In a melting pot, everyone is a foreigner.

Often in my works I use the character Toko, a hybrid of my daughter and myself. In my works, Toko lives, explores, questions and reflects the world as I see it. They are moments and snippets of oddities and happenings.

Biography

Yoko Nogami was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. She received her Bachelor of Fine Art degree from
Boston University and received a Master of Fine Art degree from University of South Florida. She apprenticed with Mexican American muralist Judith F. Baca in Los Angeles, assisted in the production of World Wall and Guadalupe Mural Project in 1989-90. Though possessing a strong background in painting, she also incorporates video, installation and performance as an interdisciplinary artist, driven by her research in cultural identity displacement and gender issues. Her works have been shown internationally from Tokyo to Berlin, Germany and Finland. Most recent endeavor, HOMEBOUND by Project: HOME collective gained much interest locally, based on a public art project focusing on a concept of HOME. She lives in St. Petersburg, Florida where she is an adjunct professor at University of South Florida, University of Tampa and The Art Institute of Tampa.

All I Wanted Was To Be A House, (charcoal & chalk on paper)