Yukiyo Kawano

Portland, Oregon

About Yukiyo Kawano

Yukiyo Kawano is a third-generation hibakusha (atomic bomb survivor) who grew up decades after the bombing of Hiroshima. Her work is personal, reflecting lasting attitudes toward the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Kawano received her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Art in 2012. Since then, Kawano has exhibited her work in the US, Japan, and Australia. Kawano has given lectures at Aspen Institute in Tokyo; Portland State University, Portland, OR; Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA; Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME; among many other venues. She has appeared on radio shows such as OPB Radio, Portland, OR, and 3CR Community Radio, Melbourne, Australia. Kawano has received numerous grants, including the Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant in 2012; a Regional Arts and Culture Council grant in 2016; and The Oregon Arts Commission in 2017. Since 2016, Kawano’s project Suspended Moment has been selected by New York Foundation of the Arts’ fiscal sponsorship program. She will be an Artist-in-Residence at Santa Fe Art Institute (SFAI) in February/March 2019. Kawano currently lives in Portland, OR.

Program Participation

Joan Mitchell Center Residency, 2019

MFA Grant, 2012

Website / Social Links

My work is a direct response to the tragedy of the past, but the past I depict wants to remember the present. People say my work is like a dream; it is not meant to deliver certainties. It asks us to remain in the present, so that we can develop a new relationship of mind and body, confront the ongoing deceptive rhetoric that surrounds us, reject violence, and save ourselves from our own extinction.”