Curated by Emily Putnam. 3800 Main Street, Jordan, ON

“Generations of an Archive brings together connected bodies of work by Toronto-based artist Emma Nishimura. These works examine the legacy of multigenerational memory about the Japanese Canadian Internment and forced dispersal (1942-1949) through the family archive. The artworks encourage us to think about memory through material objects–in this instance, photographs and furoshiki bundles made from paper–and invite us to consider stories long told but partially forgotten within our communities.” Read more about the exhibition here.

20 Elm Street, Northampton, MA

“This installation includes multi-panel photographs, prints, and collages from the SCMA collection made between the 17th and 21st centuries. This selection highlights the long history and many approaches to making modular works of art.” Continue reading the press release here.

1444 Dupont Street, Unit 22, Toronto, Ontario

“Through a collection of printed and installation-based works, Rememory: Echoes & Archives by Emma Nishimura addresses ideas of memory and loss that are rooted within family stories and inherited narratives.” Continue reading the press release and see photos of the exhibition here.

Gallery 127 (located on first floor), Art Gallery of Ontario, 317 Dundas Street West, Toronto, Ontario

Featuring Brian Jungen, Emma Nishimura and Niloofar Kasbi, “the three artists featured in this exhibition experiment with established artistic mediums to create works that challenge the stereotypes associated with them. Offering personal readings about their respective cultures, the artworks shown in this gallery – all from the AGO Collection – push the boundaries of how we define printing and drawing.” Continue reading the press release here.

Kunstverket Galleri, Kirkegata 5, 0153 Oslo

“Kunstverket Galleri has collaborated with the graphics workshop Atelje Larsen since the 1990s, and with this exhibition wanted to pay tribute to one of Europe's leading workshops for quality graphics, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2022. Atelje Larsen was established in 1972 by visual artist Thormod Larsen, and since 1977 has been run by his son, foreman Ole Larsen. The workshop is a pioneer in the development of modern graphics, and over the years has worked with an impressive range of Nordic and European contemporary artists, many of whom have also previously been presented in exhibitions at Kunstverket Galleri.

In 2011, HM Queen Sonja Art Foundation was established, with Ole Larsen as one of the founders. The purpose of the foundation is to create interest in - and stimulate the development of - graphic art. Every two years, the foundation awards the Queen Sonja Print Award, where the winner receives, among other things, a study stay at Ole Larsen's workshop in Helsingborg.” Read more about the exhibition here.

Curated by Arin Fay. Touchstones Gallery, Nelson Museum, Archives, and Art Gallery. 502 Vernon Street, Nelson, BC

“Generational Echoes presents a survey of series created by Emma Nishimura and focuses on the narratives surrounding the Japanese Canadian internment.” Continue reading press release and see images of the show here.

View Tsuneko Kokubo’s performance Furoshiki, in connection with the exhibition here. 

Nelson Museum

“Grounded in research from Landscapes of Injustice – a 7 year multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional, community engaged project, this exhibit explores the dispossession of Japanese Canadians in the 1940s. It illuminates the loss of home and the struggle for justice of one racially marginalized community.” Continue reading press release here.

Venues include:

• Nikkei National Museum, Burnaby, BC, September 2020-June 27, 2021

• Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, Toronto, ON, fall 2021

• Museum of Surrey, Surrey, BC, February 5-April 24, 2022

• Royal BC Museum, Victoria, BC, June 10-November 2022

• Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, Halifax, NS, February 11-April 23, 2023

• Galt Museum & Archives, Lethbridge, AB, May 27-September 3, 2023

• The Exploration Place, Prince George, BC, September-December 2023

• Nanaimo Museum, Nanaimo, BC, February 1-April 27, 2024

Canadian artwork curated by Mark Bovey. Central Academy of Fine Arts Art Museum, Online Cloud Gallery, Beijing, China.

Artists were invited from more than 40 academies in nearly 30 countries around the world to participate in the exhibition. Due to the Covid-19 global pandemic, the exhibition is being hosted online. View the exhibition or read more about the show here.

International Print Center New York, 508 WEST 26TH STREET, 5A, NEW YORK, NY

Opening Reception: Thursday, October 10, 6–8pm, Press and Member Preview Thursday, October 10, 4:30–6pm. Public Programming: Saturday, October 26, 11am–12pm, History as Matrix: Emma Nishimura and Tahir Carl Karmali in conversation with Regine Basha

“International Print Center New York is pleased to announce its first two-person exhibition, Paper Borders, which brings into dialogue the works of Emma Nishimura (b. 1982, Toronto) and Tahir Carl Karmali (b. 1987, Nairobi), artists who share a commitment to unearthing historical and ongoing stories of migration, trans-generational memory, and xenophobia. Using the materiality of print and handmade paper, the two- and three-dimensional works in this exhibition speak to cross-cultural and deeply embedded global struggles. Here, the precarity of paper becomes a metaphor for the precarity of place.

The accompanying publication will feature an essay on the dialogue between the works of both artists by Kelly Baum, Cynthia Hazem Polsky and Leon Polsky Curator of Contemporary Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, along with artist biographies, a reading list, color illustrations, and studio photographs.”

Curated by Emily Putnam, St. Patrick’s Building, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, Ontario

“Sites of Memory: Legacies of the Japanese Canadian Internment features the work of three artists of Japanese Canadian ancestry: Norman Takeuchi (Ottawa), Emma Nishimura (Toronto) and Cindy Mochizuki (Vancouver). Their works collectively propose artmaking as a means of addressing the Canadian government’s internment of Japanese Canadians during World War II. Drawing on documentary records, Takeuchi, Nishimura and Mochizuki negotiate the complexity of reflecting on this traumatic history while articulating a delicate balance between remembering and forgetting.”

Juried Exhibition, Centre d’Exposition Raymond-Lasnier, 1425, place de l'Hôtel-de-Ville, Trois-Rivières, QE.

Winner of the the Grand Prix de la 11e Biennale Internationale d’Estampe Contemporaine de Trois-Rivières.

This exhibition is the largest in Canada dedicated to printmaking. “The 11e BIECTR reflects great cultural diversity: through the 280 or so exhibited works we become acquainted with the research and creative interests of 53 printmakers from 21 countries.” The jurors this year were: Nadine Bariteau, artist, BC, Jean-François Bélisle, chief curator and director of the Musée d’art de Joliette, QE, Mylene Gervais, artist and professor at the Université du Quebec à Trois- Rivières, Tania Girard-Savoie, artist, QE, and Françoise Pétrovitch, artist, France. Continue reading the press release.

Group exhibition, co-curated by Dr. Heather Read, Rebanks Postdoctoral Fellow in Canadian Decorative Arts & Material Culture; Dr. Arlene Gehmacher, ROM World Cultures Curator; Bryce Kanbara, and Dr. Katharine Yamashita, Level 1, Sigmund Samuel Gallery of Canada, Royal Ontario Museum, 100 Queen’s Park, Toronto, ON

"Explore a series of artworks interspersed throughout the Sigmund Samuel Gallery of Canada, and encounter personal perspectives on the exile, dispossession, and internment of Japanese Canadians during the 1940s. This installation features contemporary artists who experienced this history first hand, and those who grapple with their parents and grandparents’ experiences. Being Japanese Canadian prompts us to reflect on the long-lasting ramifications of this historical Canadian injustice, and what it means to be Canadian today." Continue reading press release.

Group exhibition, curated by Anna Hoberman and John Ros, Duke Hall Gallery of Fine Art, James Madison University, 820 South Main St., Harrisonburg, VA

Featured artists include: Alix Lambert, Allan McCollum, Aurora De Armendi, Azikiwe Mohammed, Elizabeth Moran, Emma Nishimura and Jo Baer.
”Since before the Renaissance, prints have enabled artists to disseminate their work and perspectives throughout the world. A print, unlike other types of art, can exist in multiple places at the same time. Editions have played, and continue to aid, an important role of documenting and testifying to the existence of events. This documentary ability puts a print into the realms of an archive. The archive is an accumulation and preservation of records, documents and primary sources. Artists take on the role of cultural archivist — pulling from, referencing, preserving and collecting artifacts.” Continue reading press release and exhibition essay here.

Juried exhibition, International Print Center New York, 508 WEST 26TH STREET, 5A, NEW YORK, NY

Winner of the IPCNY Mentorship Award, New Prints Artist Development Program

"IPCNY is pleased to present the fifty-eighth presentation of its New Prints Program, a biannual, juried open call for prints and print-based work created in the preceding twelve months. Titled Multilayered, the exhibition was selected by Juan Sánchez, one of the most significant artists of the Nuyorican cultural movement. As a multimedia artist with an activist stance, Sánchez draws on symbols, images, and texts from popular and traditional culture to explore questions of ethnic and national identity. Sánchez dedicates this exhibition to Sam Coronado (1946 – 2013), a printmaker, activist, and educator who dedicated his life to the Latinx arts community. 

The 43 prints and print-based works on view in Multilayered reflect Sánchez’s interest in new narratives for an increasingly hybridized cultural world. Many of the artists skillfully deploy traditional printmaking techniques, including lithography, etching, woodcut, and screenprints, to create enigmatic characters and complex scenes, while others use prints as the basis for expansive installations. In this exhibition, Sánchez also places particular emphasis on hand-made artist books, many of which overtly address current social and political themes. The artists on view also display a particular propensity towards experimenting with mediums, combining traditional commercial materials with a great variety of handmade papers, and adding embroidery, gold leaf, and even mushroom spores to their prints." For more information and a full list of the participating artists click here.

I am one of ten finalists in this juried exhibition, The Print Center, Philadelphia, PA

"The Print Center’s 92nd ANNUAL International Competition features works by 45 of the finest contemporary artists using Photography or Printmaking as critical components in their works today. This year the competition was juried by Keliy Anderson-Staley, Assistant Professor of Photography and Digital Media at the University of Houston and Katherine Ware, Curator of Photography at the New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe. The Print Center’s ANNUAL is one of the most prestigious and oldest juried exhibitions in the United States. This online exhibition presents portfolios of the work of the 35 semi-finalists and 10 finalists. It provides a unique opportunity to view the work of local, national and international artists in a forum which emphasizes individual talent and expressiveness rather than a specific exhibition topic. Anderson-Staley and Ware reviewed over 2,100 images submitted by 420 artists." To read more about the competition click here.

Solo exhibition, Open Studio, 401 Richmond Street West, Suite #104, Toronto, ON

Opening Reception: February 15, 2018

"This is a library, of sorts. Rather than stories written on paper and bound into books, this library, by Toronto-based artist Emma Nishimura, captures the fleeting nature of family memories. Nishimura cares for these memories, visually wrapping them like furoshiki, a traditional Japanese bundle used to contain food and gifts. The stories here—memories of the experience and effects of the uprooting, exile and internment of 22,000 Japanese Canadians during the Second World War—are sensitive; Nishimura’s use of the furoshiki underscores a need for caretaking of these narratives and their people." To continue reading the essay by Heather Read, please click here to download the brochure.

www.openstudio.ca

Group exhibition. Moulin de La Chevrotière. 109, rue De Chavigny, Deschambault-Grondines, QC.

"Nineteen artists use thread, fabric, paper and other materials known for their fragility to tell stories of disappearance, well-kept secrets or ignored realities. The creators were invited to break momentarily with the usual patterns of memory, to linger on the innocuous, discreet, and what has passed or will go unnoticed." Continue reading press release here.

www.biennaledulin.com
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Solo exhibition, curated by Tomiko Jones. Desai Matta Gallery, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, CA

“In this pair of solo exhibitions, artists Emma Nishimura and Neil Chowdury listen closely for whispers that illuminate their family stories, and in the process point to larger narratives of colonization, migration, and adaptation through the diasporic experience.” Continue reading press release here.

Arts at CIIS

Group exhibition including artists from more than 28 countries and regions. The exhibition is traveling within China - venues include: Beijing Taimiao Art Gallery, Nanjing Jinling Art Museum, Tianjin Art Museum, Shijiazhuang Art Museum, Shenzhen Guanlan Original Printmaking Museum, China.

Participating Canadian artists (curated by Mark Bovey) include: Derek Michael Besant, Briar Craig, Guy Langevin, Liz Ingram, Sean Caulfield, Ericka Walker, Joscelyn Gardner, Emma Nishimura, Elmyna Bouchard and Mark Bovey.

Group exhibition, curated by Kristine Olson (an MA Candidate in Critical and Curatorial Studies at the University of British Columbia). Franc Gallery, Vancouver, BC.

"Absence in Remembrance centres on the remembrance and commemoration of the experience and legacy of the Japanese Canadian Internment, which began in British Columbia and unfolded across Canada during World War II. At a generational remove from the internment experience, each artist has come to know and “remember” the experience indirectly through different encounters and means, including oral testimonies, family photographs, novels, and archival research." Continue reading press release here.

Franc Gallery