Shingo Shaun Yamazaki

Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, USA

Artist statement

Shingo Yamazaki’s paintings examine diasporic identity, cultural hybridity, and the shifting meanings of home. Influenced by his upbringing in Hawaiʻi and his current home in Los Angeles, his work reflects on what it means to live between cultures, and how belonging can feel both familiar and foreign. As a Japanese and Korean American shaped in part by his family’s Zainichi history, referring to Koreans living in Japan across generations under Japanese occupation, Yamazaki considers what is preserved, what is hidden, and what becomes difficult to access within family histories. Central to his practice is an interest in how families determine what is carried forward across generations and what is withheld or left unspoken. His relationship to his Zainichi Korean heritage was shaped by limited access to parts of his family history, informing his understanding of how migration, assimilation, and cultural erasure can shape what subsequent generations inherit. In fear of stigma and the consequences they may bring, many Zainichi Koreans concealed their original identities, even from their own children, opting to assimilate to Japanese culture. Yamazaki's practice navigates through spectrums of obscurity, reflecting the pressures many immigrant families to remain unnoticed and the varying degrees of proximity of knowing one’s place and heritage through generations or memory. These veiled forms take shape in everyday objects and partially concealed figures of family members within...

Artwork