SUGAR

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By Laura Kina

August 31, 2010
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About the Artist

Laura Kina received her MFA Studio Art from the University of Illinois at Chicago and her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is an Associate Professor of Art, Media, and Design and distinguished Vincent de Paul Professor at DePaul University. Born in Riverside, California to an Okinawan father from Hawai’i and a Spanish-Basque/Anglo mother, Kina was raised in a small Norwegian town in the Pacific Northwest. The artist currently lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. Her work has shown nationally and internationally, most recently in New Delhi and Mumbai, India, and is represented in Miami, FL by Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts. Her recent solo shows include: A Many-Splendored Thing (Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago, IL 2010), Aloha Dreams and Hapa Soap Operas (Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts, Miami, FL 2007 and 2003), and Loving (Grand Projects, New Haven, CT 2006).

For more information visit www.laurakina.com

About the Work

Set during the 1920’s-1940’s, Laura Kina’s SUGAR paintings recall obake ghost stories and feature Japanese and Okinawan picture brides turned machete carrying sugar cane plantation field laborers on the Big Island of Hawaii.  Drawing on oral history and family photographs from Nisei (2nd generation) and Sansei (3rd generation) from Peepekeo, Pi’ihonua, and Hakalau plantation community members as well as historic images, Kina’s paintings take us into a beautiful yet grueling world of manual labor, cane field fires and flumes.

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