Miné Okubo’s Eyes: A Life in Colors at The Center for Social Justice & Civil Liberties

Riverside Community College District’s Center for Social Justice & Civil Liberties will celebrate the opening of Miné Okubo’s Eyes: A Life in Colors on April 26 from 5:30 to 9 pm. The event includes a talk with curator ShiPu Wang, Ph.D. Wang is the Coats Family chair in the arts and professor of Art History and Visual Culture at the University of California, Merced.

The event is open to the public; register online to attend the free event.

Miné Okubo’s Eyes: A Life in Colors is a new retrospective of the artist’s work and includes more than fifty paintings and works on paper. This exhibition displays Okubo’s body of work which spanned seven decades and makes visible a collection of paintings and drawings never seen by the public.

“Miné Okubo’s Eyes: A Life in Colors is a reinstallation of Okubo’s work that brings forth a dazzling array of paintings from the Center’s collection and provides a richer, more complete picture of her as a prolific American artist,” Tracy Fisher, Ph.D., director of The Center for Social Justice & Civil Liberties, said.

Okubo, a College alum, bequeathed her works to Riverside City College upon her death in 2001. The Center for Social Justice & Civil Liberties houses the Okubo collection which includes more than 8,000 pieces of artwork, professional and personal papers, photographic materials, and memorabilia. The bulk of the collection stems from Okubo’s last five decades of work. The majority of these pieces was created in her small one-bedroom apartment in the Greenwich Village area of New York City.

“While some may be familiar with Okubo’s Citizen 13660, her radical and subversive graphic novel of nearly 200 drawings and accompanying text documenting Okubo’s experiences as a Japanese American incarcerated in the US during World War II, others may not know that she created art before, during and after the Second World War. Over her lifetime, she never stopped making art; instead, she was always documenting, imagining, creating and understanding the broader world in which she lived,” Fisher said.

Located at 3855 Market St. in Riverside, The Center for Social Justice & Civil Liberties is a museum, archive and educational center rooted in the community. It is committed to an ongoing focus on historical and contemporary issues and struggles for justice in the Inland Southern California region and beyond. For more information about The Center, this exhibition, and the Okubo collection, please visit The Center's website. Miné Okubo’s Eyes: A Life in Colors is made possible through the support from the Terra Foundation of American Art.

Featured Artwork: Miné Okubo, Untitled (Woman Wearing a Naval Officer's Uniform), n.d. Oil on Canvas 53 1/8 x 44 1/2 in. The Miné Okubo Charitable Corporation, EL 2012.1.28