Mia Ohki | I Know What It Looks Like

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Mia Ohki, “Redefine,” 2018

acrylic (courtesy of the Gallery)

I Know What This Looks Like explores the parallels between two particularly damaging chapters in Canadian history – the Internment of Japanese Canadians in WWII and the generational trauma caused by residential schools. Mia Ohki delves into her heritage and our nation’s history. Her powerful works gently walk the viewer into the past.

Sitting with these traumatic histories, Ohki is reckoning with her inheritance. Hailing from Japanese and Métis ancestry, she learned about these histories from family members. Choosing a limited colour palette of red and yellow ochre, orange, black and white was an act of acknowledgement and reclamation, “In the past, these colours were used to discriminate, to define individuals by their skin, and to create fear based around an incorrect perception… I hope to give these colours new meaning.”