Pictures of Belonging is an exhibition currently at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) on the University of Utah Campus. The exhbition started at UMFA in February 2024 as its first stop on a national tour. Now in its final days at UMFA, the exhibition will close on June 30, 2024.
World War II was a time of great turmoil in the United States and the world. The people living on the West Coast of the United States who were of Japanese heritage were mostly forced to leave their homes and enter American concentration camps. They lost their livelihoods, their homes, most of their belongings, their friends, and their freedom.
Three Japanese American female artists who lived during that period of time had careers which eventually spanned eight decades. The women are Miki Hayakawa (1899-1953), Hisako Hibi (1907-1991), and Miné Okubo (1912-2001). More than 100 pieces of artwork created by these women is in an exhibiton called Pictures of Belonging.
Two of the women, Hibi and Okubo, were unjustly imprisoned with other Japanese Americans at the Topaz Camp near Delta, Utah, during the war.