In the wake of the panic and paranoia of World War II, the U.S. government feared that Japanese Americans would commit acts of sabotage against the nation. Along with some 120,000 Japanese Americans living in the western part of the country, Ruth Asawa (1926-2013) and her family – separated from their father, who was sent to a camp in New Mexico – were uprooted in 1942 and sent to another camp. internment camp hastily organized at the Santa Anita race track in Arcadia, California. There, Asawa and her siblings lived for five months in two horse stables.
Because Asawa no longer had to work on the farm, she began to fill her days with drawing. “Among those arrested were animators from Walt Disney Studios, who were teaching art in the grandstands of the race track,” the artist’s estate said. “In September, the Asawa family was sent by train to a prison camp in Rohwer, Arkansas, where Ruth spent most of her free time painting and drawing.” This creative practice would shape the rest of her life.
David Zwirner in Hong Kong has a new exhibition titled Doing is living celebrates Asawa’s famous wire sculptures (formerly) and intimate works on paper. The show marks the first solo presentation of her work in Greater China, focusing on the artist’s connection to the natural world.
“I study nature and many of these shapes come from observing plants,” Asawa said in a 1995 interview. “I really look at nature, and I just do it as I see it. I draw something on paper. And then I can take a wire rope and go up into the sky and define the sky without stealing it from anyone.
Asawa began developing her wire sculptures in the 1940s while studying at Black Mountain College. An experimental liberal arts school nestled in the hills of rural North Carolina, the college was a progressive program designed to mold young people into well-rounded individuals who could think critically as they entered society.
The school focused on democratic processes, placing responsibility for education on the students themselves, who often influenced the admission and selection of new faculty. The students were expected to contribute to the daily activities by working on the farm, cooking in the kitchen and building school buildings and furniture as necessary.
Asawa enrolled in BMC in 1946 and spent three years there. “The teachers there were practicing artists,” she said. “There was no separation between studying, carrying out daily tasks and dealing with many art forms.” She counted painter Jozef Albersinventor Buckminster Fuller, mathematician Max Dehn – and many others – under lifelong influences. “It was through them that I began to understand the total commitment it takes if you want to be an artist,” she added.
“For Asawa, her time at Black Mountain was so transformative because the culture gave her the right to do anything she wanted to do,” her legacy says, adding:
For the first time, she was expected to have an opinion. She met teachers who gave her the freedom and responsibility to fail or succeed as only she could, as a unique individual. She lived among strong, creative women – Trude Guermonprez, Anni Albers and Marguerite Wildenhain, to name a few – who lived as working artists. Black Mountain College gave her the courage to become an artist and the credo she would live by for the rest of her life.
In late 1949, after college, Asawa moved to San Francisco with Albert Lanier, whom she soon married. In the 1950s, prestigious exhibitions such as the Whitney Biennial and an exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art introduced her work to a growing audience. Asawa also had a passion for education and she became the driving force behind the creation of the San Francisco School of the Arts.
When she began working with wire, Asawa experimented with relatively conventional basket designs before moving to biomorphic, abstract works that could be strung from the ceiling. She learned a crochet technique in Toluca, Mexico, where she visited Josef Albers in 1947 while he was on sabbatical.
Many of her works contain nested, membrane-like ‘form-within-a-form’ layers in which elements appear to fold or turn inside out on themselves. Asawa later commented, “What I was excited about was that I could make a shape that was inside and outside at the same time.”
Doing is living highlights intricate, ethereal pieces that merge elements of textile and sculpture. Delicate and airy, her compositions “range from elaborate multi-lobed compositions to small spheres and undulating conical shapes that require extreme technical dexterity,” the gallery says. Highlights also include her heavier wire-bound pieces, which she began making in 1962, showing branch-like organic forms and biological phenomena.
“After being given a desert plant whose branches split exponentially as they grew, Asawa quickly became frustrated with her attempts to replicate its structure in two dimensions,” the gallery says. “Instead, she used industrial wire as a means to recreate the form through sculpture, studying its shape in the process.” Asawa was fascinated by the permeability of the sculptures and the viewer’s ability to see through them, as if seeing the sky between tree branches.
“Relentlessly experimental across media, Asawa moved effortlessly between abstract and figurative registers in both two and three dimensions,” the gallery says.. The work in this exhibition spans five decades and exemplifies the range of media and techniques she used in her career.
Doing is living continues through February 22. Read more about the exhibition about David Zwirner websiteand delve further into Asawa’s work and biography on her estate website.
