Gentleman’s Gaman
2009
tarpaper, wood, mixed media

Inspired by Jiro Onuma, this project imagines alternative queer visions of Japanese American wartime history. The Japanese word “gaman” means enduring the unbearable with patience and dignity. The “art of gaman” refers to artworks produced in the wartime camps using found materials. Gentleman’s Gaman reengages these craft practices and infuses them with a queer sensibility.

Exhibitions
We Live! Memories of Resistance, OXY Arts Gallery, 2020;
Loving After A Lifetime of All This, La Esquina, Kansas City, MO, 2015;
Loving After A Lifetime of All This, Center for Craft, Asheville, NC, 2014-15;
LGBTQ Art: Our Common Wealth, Commonwealth Club, San Francisco, 2014
Queer Past Becomes Present, GLBT History Museum, San Francisco, 2012
Nothing to Declare, Vargas Museum, Quezon City, Philippines, 2012
The Future Is Now: Asian America on Its Own Terms, SOMArts, 2012
Past Present Future Imperatives: Queer Space Time, Sabina Lee Gallery, Los Angeles, 2012
History and Future of Queer Cultural Center, San Francisco Foundation, 2011
Lineage: Matchmaking in the Archive, GLBT Historical Society Gallery, 2009

Press / Publications
EG Crichton, Matchmaking in the Archive: 19 Conversations with the Dead and 3 Encounters with Ghosts (Rutgers University Press, 2023)

Kenji C. Liu, “Gaman: Topaz Concentration Camp, Utah,” Poem-a-Day, Academy of American Poets (October 17, 2019)

Joe Nolan, “Art Review: ‘Loving After Lifetimes of All This’ at Asheville’s Center for Craft, Creativity and Design,” Burnaway (March 17, 2015)

Tina Takemoto, “Looking for Jiro Onuma: A Queer Meditation on the Incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 20.3 (Duke University Press, 2014), 241-75  and cover art

Brian Hearn, “Loving After Lifetimes of All this at la Esquina,” Temporary Art Review (December 29, 2014)

Tina Takemoto,”Notes on Internment Camp,” Art Journal 72.2 (Summer 2013), 54-57

Peter Hernandez, “Viewers Imagine Past Through International Archive,” Bay Area Reporter (January 23, 2013)

Tirza True Latimer, “Life in the Archives,” Open Space, SFMOMA Field Notes (January 27, 2012)

Adrienne Skye Roberts, “What We Leave Behind: New Narratives in a Queer Archive,” SFMOMA Open Space (July 8, 2009)

Victoria Gannon, “Lineage: Matchmaking in the Archive” KQED Arts (June 30, 2009)

Sister Dana Van Iquity, “Archives Go on a Blind Date at the GLBT Historical Society,” San Francisco Bay Times (June 25, 2009)

Tina Takemoto, “Looking for Jiro and Gentleman’s Gaman,” Radical Teacher 92 (2011) and cover art