Sarah Fukami, Denver, Colorado | printmaking

Residency dates: November 1 – December 14, 2017

Across the Ocean, Over the Wall

Opening Reception 6-8pm, Thursday, December 14

Exhibition dates: December 14th, 2017 - January 27th, 2018

PlatteForum is thrilled to present a new exhibition by Sarah Fukami and PlatteForum's ArtLab high school interns, Across the Ocean, Over the Wall, which seeks to elaborate on one of the most prevalent topics in America today: immigration. The exhibition will be the culmination of her six weeks of workshops with PlatteForum’s ArtLab high school interns, utilizing the multiple and collected personal effects, the multimedia sculptural installation, becomes a representation of, and an ode to people in the US who are immigrants or descendants of immigrants.

This exhibition is the beginning of a larger project called Our Immigrant Stories, a partnership with Denver’s Agency on Human Rights and Community Partnerships and the Denver Film Society.

Resident Artist exhibitions are generously supported by OZ Architecture

About the Artist

Sarah Fukami was born and raised in Colorado and received a BFA with honors from the University of Denver in 2014. Her work revolves around the formation of identity and perception of history, particularly in relation to the immigrant experience.

The internment of her Japanese-American family during World War II piqued her interest in the topics of ethnicity, nationality and thus the identity crises that occur when they conflict. Beginning with the use of personal resources such as photographs, objects and documents, Fukami’s work has extended to the larger context of Japanese-American history by delving through government photographic archives and investigating the stories of nameless Japanese-American citizens. Her research has also led to an interest in the dissemination of history, and how it is manipulated and understood throughout time.

Much of Fukami’s work is done on Plexiglas, a material that allows Sarah to layer several aspects of a subject while simultaneously delineating them physically between surfaces.

“This process allows the viewer to focus on the individual facets, as well as step back and view the work as a whole. As my work progresses, I hope to address issues of identity and history that continually reach outward in an attempt to grasp a better understanding of human perception and experience.”