Maki Kaneko

This project explores the art of Japanese American painter and collagist, Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani (1920–2012) through a retrospective exhibition—slated for 2025 at the Spencer Museum of Art—and accompanying scholarly catalog, for which I serve as the main author. Mirikitani studied Japanese traditional painting in Hiroshima and was a kibei (Japanese American who grew up in Japan) who lost his U.S. citizenship and survived an internment camp during World War II. While living on the streets of New York City between the mid-1980s and 2001, Mirikitani created art using cast-off materials and art supplies provided by pedestrians and displayed his works on the sidewalk to share his life stories with the public.

This will be the first major scholarly investigation of Mirikitani’s artistic trajectory and “sidewalk” activities. It will highlight his collaborative mode of artmaking that involved pedestrians and examine how his traumatic memories became shareable across social and racial boundaries. This inquiry corresponds with and will contribute to the recent scholarly/curatorial efforts to transnationalize the fields and pursue interdisciplinary approaches, thereby bringing voice to those who have remained in obscurity due to their “in-between” statuses as immigrants, refugees, and non-citizens.