Ruth Asawa: Japanese-American Artist Shaped by Internment

Ruth Asawa, a second-generation Japanese American artist born in 1926 and died in 2013, spent part of her teenage years in a US internment camp. After the war, she raised six children in California while pursuing her art. Asawa became known for her abstract, suspended sculptures created from woven wire.

Despite holding multiple minority identities as a woman, immigrant, and craft-focused artist, international recognition came posthumously. A biography titled Ruth Asawa: Touching on Everything was published this spring, with art critic Ryo Zawaya noting that Asawa transformed societal disadvantages into opportunities fueling her art.

Asawa’s work is gaining renewed attention in Europe and the US, including a retrospective at New York’s MoMA coinciding with the centennial of her birth. However, her work remains largely unknown in Japan, with limited opportunities for domestic viewing despite one piece being added to the collection of the National International Art Museum in Osaka in 2024.