LACMA

(such as bandannas and oversized flannel shirts) often stereo- typically associated with gang activity. Saldamando then left the photographs on a table in front of a bulletin board and asked the public to post the image they liked most. By inviting spectators to participate, the work prompted the audience to consider how their preferences may be influenced by precon- ceived notions of race and class. In 2006, Saldamando was invited to create an altarpiece for a Day of the Dead exhibition; she decided to commemorate the experience of her maternal grandmother, grandfather, and aunts and uncles, all residents of Los Angeles, who had been detained at Rohwer Internment Camp in Arkansas during World War II. In her research, she learned that the funerary flower wreaths shown in historical photographs of Japanese internment camps were actually made of craft paper due to restrictions and the scarcity of flowers in the camp. Saldamando became curious about whether her grandmother's lifelong interest in crafting came from the Japanese origami tradition or if it was encouraged in the camps as a way to pass the time. She eventually unearthed scrapbooks from the camps that included patterns from Sears Roebuck and other mail- order catalogues for making paper flowers, including "oriental" poppies. The result was Farewell to Rohwer, a paper flower wreath to honor her grandmother and the generation of internees who are now at the end of their lives. —MICHELE URTON Shizu Saldamando's work proposes a decidedly contemporary take on portraiture, in which the conventional constructs of identity are challenged by layering signifiers and hybrid meanings that hint at the complexity of ethnicity, race, class, and gender. Born and raised in San Francisco to parents of Japanese and Latino descent, Saldamando's work subtly reflects the influence of both cultures as well as American pop and youth subcultures. Her portraits—at once intimate and provocative, documenting a world where identity is fluid— are based on snapshots taken of friends and family at informal social gatherings, such as parties, dance clubs, art openings, and barbeques. The seemingly ordinary moments that she captures, though, have much to say about group dynamics and identity. Her paintings often incorporate collage elements made of origami paper, and several portraits (including a self-portrait) feature backgrounds that make reference to Asian screen paintings, yet the ambiguous ethnicity of her subjects (along with their hip clothing and visible tattoos) prevents the viewer from making a definitive assessment about their identity. For her MFA thesis exhibition at California Institute of the Arts, Saldamando installed Looking at Art: The Reception, large-scale pen drawings that featured the artist's friends mingling at an art opening. Yet instead of the viewer looking in at the subjects, the artist slyly reversed the gaze by having her subjects peer out expectantly at the viewer. Viewers became keenly aware of their own assumptions about the subjects, an awareness that offered a fresh way of considering the self and others. Saldamando's use of video and other media shares many of the same concerns as her two-dimensional portraits. In Translation (1999), she produced an installation that documented her maternal grandmother translating Japanese soap operas for her, in which a video of the artist's grandmother was projected on the back wall above a sofa, affording the viewer the experience of sitting with Saldamando's grandmother while she translated. The work is embedded with signifiers of personal memory and place, revealing an intimate look at the artist's own familial experiences while also illuminating the ways in which culture is transferred from generation to generation. A year later she created a performance piece in which she staged a "chola fashion shoot" by styling an upper-class white model in the makeup, hair, and wardrobe 197 SHIZU SALDAMANDO

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