Installation view, Miné Okubo: Portraits, Seizan Gallery, New York

Miné Okubo: Portraits
And
Life Studies: Vincent Chong, Aya Fujioka, Alex Ito, Charlie Mai, Homer Shew
Closing Saturday, March 1, 2025
525 West 26th Street

There’s still time to experience Seizan Gallery‘s two captivating exhibitions, Miné Okubo: Portraits and Life Studies before they close on Saturday, March 1!

Miné Okubo: Portraits is the gallery’s first solo exhibition featuring work by one of the most influential Japanese-American artists of the 20th century. Born in 1912 in Riverside, California, Okubo gained early success and remained prolific until her death in 2001. She is best known for Citizen 13660, a memoir documenting her experience in WWII Japanese-American internment camps. After her release from Topaz Camp in 1944, she moved to New York, working as a commercial illustrator while continuing her painting practice. Portraits—especially of women and children—remained a central focus of her work, with eleven portraits from the late 1940s featured in this exhibit. These bold, powerful works share stylistic connections with her earlier charcoal drawings from the internment period, which are also displayed in the gallery. While her camp drawings often convey the despair and trauma of the incarcerated, the later portraits—rendered in colorful pastel—capture energy, strength, and compassion.

Installation view, Life Studies: Vincent Chong, Aya Fujioka, Alex Ito, Charlie Mai, Homer Shew, Seizan Gallery, New York

LIFE STUDIES is a group exhibition featuring works by five emerging artists—Vincent Chong, Aya Fujioka, Alex Ito, Charlie Mai, and Homer Shew—that explores the diverse varieties of contemporary life and identity as experienced by individuals of Asian descent and diaspora in New York and beyond.

To learn more about both shows, click here.