Cover: "Over the Rainbow, One More Time, 2022, Acrylic and charcoal on canvas, 36” x 48”

All images courtesy of the artist.

Artist Statement

Laura Kina is a painter in love with saturated color, light, textile patterns, and emotional landscapes who travels time with her diverse communities to remember the past, critically reflect on the present, and dream the future. Her research-based studio practice is focused on Okinawan diasporic identity and draws inspiration from personal and ancestral narratives, photographs of my everyday life and travels, family and community photo albums, archival research, and oral history. Contemporary Asian American art, Asian American studies, Critical Ethnic studies, Critical Mixed Race studies, feminist/queer theory, and Okinawan studies form the nexus for her intersectional scholarly research, publications, and projects.

Kina’s works featured in Bluestem are from her 2023 “Over the rainbow, One More Time” series about starting over. It’s about grief and life in the after. Conceived during the Covid-19 pandemic in the wake of surviving breast cancer, the end of a 25 yearlong marriage, and coming out as queer, her paintings and photographs use storytelling and fragments of memories to trace her journey through trauma into wellness and the unknown.

Presenting images of a world gone askew, Kina’s paintings find beauty and hope in moments of complete collapse from the isolation of her sickbed, chemo bay, hospital exam room, the bathroom floor, and emergency room. Golden hour sunrises and sunsets reoccur in the series marking time passing as life goes on, if we are lucky, one more time.

Laura Kina is a queer mixed-race Okinawan American artist, scholar, and breast cancer survivor. She received her BFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and MFA in Studio Art from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Kina has exhibited her paintings and mixed-media art nationally and internationally in galleries and museums including the Chicago Cultural Center, India Habitat Centre, India International Centre, Japanese American National Museum, Okinawa Prefectural Art Museum, Rose Art Museum, the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, Spertus Museum, and the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience. Kina is an Art Matters Foundation Grantee, and through 3Arts – 3AMP Mentorship artist, a Make a Wave artist, Joan Mitchell Center Fellow, 3AP Project awardee, and Ragdale Fellow. Her artwork is in public collections at the Okinawa Prefectural Museum, The Smithsonian Archives of American Art, DePaul University School of Music, and Heiwa Terrace.

Laura Kina is a Vincent de Paul Professor at The Art School at DePaul University; curator for the Virtual Asian American Art Museum; a co-founder of the Critical Mixed Studies conference, journal, and association; visual art section editor for Bridge; and series editor for The University of Washington Press for the Critical Ethnic Studies and Visual Culture book series. She co-edited War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art and Queering Contemporary Asian American Art. Kina illustrated an award winning children’s book, Okinawan Princess: Da Legend of Hajichi Tattoos. Kina is a 2022-2023 Public Voices Op-Ed Project Fellow through DePaul University. In 2023, Kina was awarded Outstanding Commitment in Education by the State of Illinois Treasure’s Office for LGBTQ+ History Month and Provost’s Award for Excellence in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at DePaul University.

IG @laura.kina / www.laurakina.com / Photo credit: Misty Lyn Bergeron