About the Artwork
Surrounded by barracks and barbed wire, a toddler rides his tricycle under a soldier’s watchful gaze. The child represents the artist, Roger Shimomura, who was sent with his family to Camp Minidoka in Idaho in 1942, after US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt commanded the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
Shimomura draws on his own experiences, popular culture, and contemporary and Japanese art to address the complexity of his identity as a third-generation Japanese American (sansei) and to protest anti-Asian racism in the United States. The gold clouds evoke those of Japanese paintings from the 1500s.
American Guardian
2007
Roger Shimomura (Artist) American, born 1939 Aaron Shipps (Printer) American Jesse Baker (Printer) American Michael Sims (Printer) American Will Burnip (Printer) American (Publisher) The Lawrence Lithography Workshop Lawrence, Kansas
Lithograph printed in color ink on white wove paper
Image: 27 × 39 inches (68.6 × 99.1 cm) Sheet: 31 5/8 × 43 1/4 inches (80.3 × 109.9 cm)
Prints
Prints, Drawings & Photographs
Museum Purchase, Lee and Tina Hills Graphic Arts Fund
2011.91
Non-commercial all standard museum
Markings
Signed and dated, in pencil, lower right: ROGER SHIMOMURA 2007
Inscribed, in pencil, lower center: "AMERICAN GUARDIAN" Inscribed, lower left: 14/50 Inscribed, lower left corner, verso, above the drystamp: 25H-06-2
Drystamp, lower right corner: Lawrence Lithography Workshop Watermark: RIVES
Provenance
(Lawrence Lithography Workshop, Kansas City, Missouri, USA);2011-present, purchase by the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)
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Credit Line for Reproduction
© Copyright Roger Shimomura
Roger Shimomura, American Guardian, 2007, lithograph printed in color ink on white wove paper. Detroit Institute of Arts, Museum Purchase, Lee and Tina Hills Graphic Arts Fund, 2011.91.
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