OCMA (Orange County Museum of Art)

Alan Nakagawa works primarily with sound, but also video, sculpture, drawing, painting and performance to explore his Japanese American heritage. The three projects that comprise this exhibition probe issues of cultural assimilation and the generational impact of trauma.

The multimedia installation Rescue addresses Nakagawa’s personal fear of the Ku Klux Klan and, more broadly, the deep-seated fear of racism that people of color grapple with in the United States. For Peace Resonance: Hiroshima/Wendover as a Room, Nakagawa recorded the interior acoustics of both the Hiroshima Atomic Dome and the Wendover Hangar in Utah, where the Enola Gay B-29 bomber plane departed in 1945 to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The resulting sound composition draw together these vastly distant locations connected through their poignant history and reminded of the magnitude of these events and their impact following the war, particularly on Japanese immigrant experiences. Little Saigon: Six Field Trips Generating centers around six field trips Nakagawa organized for the general public to join him in visiting a variety of historic points of interest in “Little Saigon” in Orange County and questions how outsiders can explore a community they know little about, as well as the value of appropriate approaches such exploration.