October 5, 2009
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If Laura Kina were in the circus, she’d probably be a juggler—the kind who juggles five to 10 balls at the same time. They might even be on fire.
Kina has a fearless knack for trying new things and collaborating with others to come up with ideas and make them happen. It’s this anything-is-possible attitude that she instills in her students.
“I jump into things that are way over my head all the time, but I don’t jump in alone—I take all my friends with me,” says Kina, associate professor of art, media, & design and director of the Asian American Studies program. “Things may not in the end turn out how I thought they were going to be, but we usually make a big splash.”
Kina, who came to DePaul in 2001, encourages her students to embrace possibilities as opposed to fearing failure. “If it’s the night before a scholarship form is due, I tell them, just do it—just apply. Even if you fail, just go for it.”
Awarded a Vincent de Paul Professorship during this year’s Convocation, Kina, an established artist, teaches studio art classes including painting, drawing and two-dimensional foundations. As director of the Asian American Studies minor in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, she teaches a course on Asian American Arts & Culture as well as a course on Mixed Race Art for the Sophomore Seminar on Multiculturalism program. She also coordinates visiting speakers for the Department of Art, Media, & Design.
Kina is using her 2009-2010 DePaul Humanities Center Faculty Fellowship to co-curate an exhibition and book project titled “War Baby, Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art,” which will open at the DePaul Art Museum in spring 2011 and the Wing Luke Asian Museum in Seattle in 2012.
She also is working with colleagues to organize a national conference called “Emerging Paradigms in Critical Mixed Race Studies,” which will take place at DePaul in November 2010.
1. How is the Asian American Studies program unique?
While always pan-Asian, the field was historically dominated by East Asians (e.g., Chinese and Japanese) and drew Asian/Pacific heritage students. What’s interesting and atypical about DePaul is that both our faculty and students don’t fit this mold. We are also multiracial, trans-racial adoptees, African-American, Latino, Filipino, South Asian and so on. Something generationally has shifted. As I look back on my education, I see how incredibly important African-American art has been to me as an artist. If we continue to just see boundaries of “I can only learn about my own people”—whatever that means—it just doesn’t work. It’s not enough to know who we are as Americans, we have to know who we are in a global context. Our minor is an interdisciplinary field that draws from faculty from across the university, such as American studies; art, media and design; Chinese studies; communications; English; international studies; Japanese studies; Latin American/Latino studies; media and cinema studies; modern languages; and religious studies. We cross-list classes and co-present public events and have a lot of people working with us as a team.
2. How did you get into art?
I started making art when I was a little kid. I was fortunate enough to have a mom who is an artist as well as private art lessons, and I really honed my craft early on. I moved from Poulsbo, Wash., to Chicago to go to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and that’s when I became involved with the Asian American arts community through DestinAsian and the Foundation for Asian American Independent Media in the early 90s. In 2001, I joined the Asian American Artists Collective Chicago, which brought together writers, performers, filmmakers and visual artists. It’s important for me to have these collective connections. Over Korean bulgogi and beer, we’d come up with ideas for shows to curate, plays to write and artworks to collaborate on.
3. How does your work outside the classroom help you inside the classroom?
I teach a lot of studio art classes, and because I’m very active in my field, I bring a high level of passion to what I’m doing. For example, I’m a community volunteer for the MAVIN Foundation in Seattle, which is a national resource center dedicated to serving multiracial people and their families. I’m also the Midwest coordinator for a new international group called the Diasporic Asian Arts Network. I think my expertise is helpful because I tie these things back into the lecture and studio classroom—my students aren’t learning from just a textbook. I bring my professional connections and am always bringing in visiting speakers.
4. Tell me about some of your artwork.
My “Loving” series (2006) was inspired by the 1967 Loving v. Virginia U.S. Supreme Court case, which ended the ban on interracial marriage. I started doing charcoal portraits of people who were mixed race born after 1967. The drawings are life-size and are arranged in a meditative circle that simultaneously embraces and confronts the viewer. I wanted to do something about “color” in black and white. I have a show opening in December in India called “Devon Avenue Sampler.” I moved to Devon Avenue in 2003, and it definitely influenced my work. There are Christian, Hindu, Muslim and Jewish communities all in one place. I started looking at the people, signs, etc. around me, took pictures, did drawings and turned them into designs. They were sent to a fair-trade women’s organization in Mumbai called Marketplace: Handwork of India and embroidered onto indigo-dyed khadi fabric.
(To see some of Kina’s artwork, visit www.laurakina.com.)