Mistaken Identities

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Mistaken Identities

Artist Roger Shimomura American, born 1939

Publisher Lawrence Lithography Workshop

Date2005

Dimensions(Image) H: 10 1/2 in. (26.7 cm); W: 9 in. (22.9 cm)

MediumPortfolio, suite of 6 lithographs.

ClassificationPrints

Credit LineFrederick B. and Kate L. Shoemaker Fund and Museum Purchase, by exchange

Object number

2006.59A-F

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Label TextRoger Shimomura’s artwork examines the sociopolitical aspects of ethnic relations and identity. He was born in Seattle, Washington, in 1939 and spent two years of his early childhood in Minidoka, an internment camp in Idaho for Japanese Americans during World War II. He identifies himself as an American of Japanese descent and has lived his entire life under the influence of his grandmother’s admonition, delivered to him as a child, that everything he did—good or bad—would reflect on all Japanese people. This series of prints.was inspired by 56 years of diaries kept by Shimomura’s immigrant grandmother, and by artworks documenting the internment camps. Combining aspects of Pop Art, with its relationship to cartoon-based imagery, and the popular Japanese woodblock print genre ukiyo-e (“pictures of the floating world”), Shimomura has created a poignant series of images with his portfolio Mistaken Identities. Girl with ID Tag was inspired by a photograph made by Dorothea Lange (American, 1895–1965).