LA Artcore is located at 120 Judge John Aiso Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012.
Gallery Hours: 12 - 4 p.m. Thursday through Sunday
Opening Oct. 6, 1-5PM
Nancy 2024 is curated by Ana Iwataki and Gino Abrajano.
Nancy Uyemura is a third-generation Japanese American artist and writer, born and raised in Los Angeles, who currently lives and works in Little Tokyo.
She has been exhibiting in the United States and Asia since the 1970s. She has participated in exhibitions at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Modern Art Museum of Ito City, Japan, Riverside Art Museum, Pyong Taek City Museum, Osaka Triennial, among others.
In the 1990s, she began working in public art and has a number of public art commissions in California and in Japan.
From 1984 to 2017, Uyemura lived and worked at 800 Traction in downtown Los Angeles, participating in a vibrant, diverse artistic community.
At the building from 1990-1999, she co-directed Gallery IV with partners Takeo Yamaki and Takeo Morita, gallerists from Japan, as well as her mentor Mike Kanemitsu. They developed a groundbreaking program bringing together Asian American art, the LA art scene of the 1990s, and contemporary Japanese art.
Uyemura received her BA in Art and Design from UCLA and MS from USC in Education, then studied in Japan and at Otis College of Art and Design where she met and studied painting with Kanemitsu.
Her background in Art and Education has led her to work both as a teacher and in design as the longtime Director of Visual Communications for Mrs. Gooch’s Natural Foods Markets in Los Angeles.
In addition, she is a trained practitioner of Feng Shui. Her work across mediums, formats, and context reflects the diversity of her professional and life experiences, which allowed her to pursue her artistic practice. Uyemura has been active in community work for many years and works with the Little Tokyo Historical Society and Sustainable Little Tokyo Arts Action Committee.
Nancy 2024 at LA Artcore is an artist’s view of Los Angeles, tracing new and old connections between people, the places they’ve made, and the stories they tell.
Ana Iwataki is a cultural historian, writer, and curator from and based in Los Angeles. She is also a PhD candidate in Comparative Media and Culture at the University of Southern California.
Gino Abrajano is a cultural archivist who works with varying degrees of personal, artistic, and community collections through exhibitions development and artifact care. Currently, he supports traveling exhibits for The Walt Disney Archive.