Hanging on a wall in the Denver Art Museum is a painting of a Japanese woman sitting in a chair. Her name is Suye Ueyama. It was painted by her husband, Tokio Ueyama, in 1942. It鈥檚 titled 鈥淭he Evacuee.鈥� He uses saturated hues and his aesthetic is very vibrant.
鈥淲e see a very calm, peaceful genre scene here, but the context is one of great discomfort,鈥� said JR Henneman, the director of the at the museum.
Behind Suye are several barracks at the Santa Anita Assembly Center 鈥� a horse racing track. It鈥檚 where thousands of Japanese-Americans were transferred on their route to internment camps during World War II.
鈥淵ou can tell right away that they (the barracks) are鈥ot particularly over-engineered, they are very basic, rudimentary structures,鈥� Henneman said. 鈥淲e do know from accounts that it was hot, it was smelly, because many, many horses had spent time there. There were comments about the flies in the mess halls.鈥�
鈥淭he Evacuee鈥� is just one of 40 works being displayed in a new exhibit called 鈥�.鈥� The pieces have been loaned to the museum by Ueyama鈥檚 family and the Japanese American National Museum. The exhibit showcases landscapes, still life and portraits from his earlier years as well as work he created at 鈥� one of the internment camps located in southeastern Colorado.
Henneman said she was strategically looking to highlight artists of Asian descent that made contributions to American art, as their stories are often overlooked or forgotten.
鈥淭his is the one that ended up sticking or fitting the best at the Denver Art Museum because of its connection to Amache and a Colorado history that I, as far as I know, has not been told within the gallery spaces of the museum,鈥� she said.
Before his time at Amache, Tokio Ueyama was a very 鈥渃osmopolitan man,鈥� according to Henneman. He arrived in the U.S. from Japan in the early 1900s and studied fine art at the University of Southern California and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA).
Everything changed for Ueyama when Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941. More than 110,000 Japanese Americans were forced to relocate when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed , which stated that anyone deemed a threat to national security by the military could be relocated inland from the West Coast. Even though the Ueyamas were not naturalized American citizens, they were still removed from their home.
Ueyama continued painting and shared his expertise. He taught weekly art classes in Block 7E to around 150 students.
Henneman said the work speaks to his unjust treatment but also how he pushed through and found beauty purposefully and intentionally in this context.
鈥淚t's a message of survival and resilience and the role that arts can play in a situation you did not choose to be in, but also how the pursuit of beauty can serve to reassert one's own humanity,鈥� she said.
The exhibit includes portraits of some of Ueyama鈥檚 students at Amache, as well as rocks he found and polished at the camp.
鈥淲e know exactly how long Tokio and Suye were at Amache, but they did not know how long they were going to be there,鈥� Henneman said. 鈥淪o there's a commentary on, how does one pass time when the time is potentially endless?鈥�
The exhibit also features two self-portraits of Ueyama 鈥� one from 1924 when he just graduated from PAFA, and another from 1943 when he was at Amache. Henneman said you can see striking differences in his expression between the two.
鈥�(In the first,) he's this tassel-haired, open collared shirt artist. He has a great, young artist vibe,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hen we see his self portrait painted while incarcerated, and it's a little bit more rigid鈥e's serious here. He's looking straight out at us. He's not smiling鈥 think knowing the context in which this was created lends quite a lot of poignancy to his statement, 鈥業 am a serious artist. I am not where I want to be, but I am painting.鈥欌��
Henneman added that his work is important to be recognized in the American Art canon.
鈥淚f you didn't know his name nor his face, it would not be immediately apparent that he is a Japanese-born artist,鈥� Henneman said. 鈥淗is work defies stereotypes about what kind of art a Japanese person can produce, because he is very deeply informed by what we would call a Western or European tradition.鈥�
The exhibit is located on the 7th floor of the museum. It is free with museum admission and is open through May 2025.
For more information on Amache and stories from survivors and descendants, check out KUNC鈥檚 three-part series, Saving Amache 鈥� A Community Effort to Preserve a Bitter History.
