Laura Kina

DePaul University

Visualizing Shimanchu Self-Determination

Laura Kina will share her artwork along with works by other contemporary Okinawan and Okinawan diaspora artists to think through issues of Okinawan indigeneity, cultural resurgence around Shimanchu identity, and how the arts can be used as a tool to visualize radical sovereignty and self-determination beyond the confines of the nation-state.

Laura Kina is a mixed-race Okinawan American artist-scholar and Vincent de Paul Professor, The Art School, DePaul University. She illustrated Lee A. Tonouchi’s Okinawan Princess: Da Legend of Hajichi Tattoos (Bess Press, 2019), and co-edited Queering Contemporary Asian American Art (University of Washington Press, 2017), and War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art (University of Washington Press, 2013). www.laurakina.com