Shingo Shaun Yamazaki

Region: Pacific Coast

Website: http://shinyamazaki.com

City / State: Los Angeles, CA

My work addresses the complexities of cultural hybridity, identity, and the meaning of “home.” I draw on a mixture of cultural nuances, iconography, and imagery inspired by my upbringing in Honolulu, Hawai’i, and more recently my migration to Los Angeles. As a second-generation Japanese/Korean American, my work navigates the experience of having a shallow pool of personal generational connection to place while also being part of communities of deep ancestral heritages. I speak on the specificity of place, and include subtle cues and nods to nuance with an intentionality through introspective research. The work oscillates between reality and the imaginary, in which subtle layers of multicultural iconography are uniquely juxtaposed to confront the viewer with an amalgamation specific to my personal and generational history. Within these narratives, various forms of interjections bury and uncover tableaus, resulting in a visual mediation of themes such as generational trauma, anxieties, and invisibility. This process of adding and subtracting simultaneously acts as a coping mechanism, imbuing a sense of vulnerability while in the comfort of being “home.”