Felix Art Fair 2023
February 15th - 19th, 2023
Tower Suite 1205 // Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel
Residency Art Gallery is thrilled to announce our participation in the 2023 edition of Felix Art Fair. Our artist, Devon Tsuno has been selected to showcase his solo presentation titled, Jūrōdō (Heavy Labor). This year marks our fourth Felix Art Fair presentation and we could not be more proud to have a partner that represents the art community here in LA. Please join us at the The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in RM1205 during the week of February 15th, 2023.
Jōrōdō is an all-new body of work by Japanese American artist Devon Tsuno, marking the 80th anniversary of Executive Order 9066. In 1942, the United States forcefully removed over 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry from their homes and relocated them to concentration camps. In addition, thousands of Japanese families living in Peru, Panama, Mexico and other Central & South American countries were also relocated and incarcerated.
Tsuno’s grandmother (back right) incarcerated at
Rohwer concentration camp in Arkansas, January 9, 1944
Archival photograph courtesy of the Artist and the Shima Family Archive
Jōrōdō, a Japanese word to describe heavy labor, is a term Tsuno has chosen, to describe solidarity with the Mexican, Filipino, Indian and Chinese farm workers who worked alongside Tsuno's grandfather. This show of unity led to the formation of the Japanese-Mexican Labor Association (JMLA), one of America’s first multi-racial labor unions.
Jōrōdō includes images from early 20th century cantaloupe farms in the Imperial Valley, Oxnard sugar beets and berries, flowers from the largest camellia nursery that was plundered during WWII, and Japanese vegetables at the last Japanese American owned farm in Los Angeles.
Tsuno's paintings of agriculture serves as a record of the historical impact labor, beauty, migration and displacement had within the Japanese diaspora. Taking stories from his own family and working directly with the families survivors, Tsuno paints abstract memories from their past and present. Tsuno’s new body of work is a rare historical look at labor as a means of survival and solidarity, celebrating the beauty of cultural preservation.
About the ArtisT
Devon Tsuno
Devon Tsuno (b.1980) is an artist and fourth generation Angeleno. His recent spray paint and acrylic paintings, installations, and public art focus on Japanese and Okinawan American history. Tsuno’s recent work is a yonsei story, a Los Angeles story, indissociable from the complexities of intergenerational and collective trauma, fences and cages, gentrification, displacement, water and labor politics, and how and where we choose to live. Tsuno’s interests have been central to his work with the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, Hammer Museum, Candlewood Arts Festival, Los Angeles Metro, and Gallery Lara in Japan. His work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, NPR, KCET, Artillery Magazine, and X-TRA Contemporary Art Journal. Tsuno has recently exhibited at the MexiCali Biennial, Felix Art Fair, Subliminal Projects, Self Help Graphics and Art and the Seattle Art Fair. He was a Santa Fe Art Institute Water Rights Artist-In-Residence, SPArt Community Grantee, and was awarded a California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Art. Tsuno is represented by Residency Art Gallery in Inglewood, CA, is a member of J-TOWN Action と Solidarity and is an Associate Professor of Art at California State University Dominguez Hills. He received his M.F.A. from Claremont Graduate University and B.F.A. from California State University Long Beach.