Akiko Jackson

As a multi-disciplinary artist, I conceptualize my art practice through research, sculpture, and installation. I’m interested in looking at the body as an abstraction and as a reference for cultural discussions. When affordable and discarded materials are used, I make a connection to my background and where I come from — old clothing, ceramic, metal, fabric, hair — these tangible objects are dispensable in many ways, and I hold reverence for their historical agency and potential for transformation.

How are we able to transform objects to communicate and signify a sense of belonging? What aesthetic choices do we make? What happens when you leave home and never quite return to the place you're from? This thinking process of home and cultural community brings me to the aesthetic choices I make and how it can also provide a practice of mourning.

Home is an abstract concept to me as well. It often can be identified by an old trauma that transports me to an intergenerational cognition. Home can be passed through memories and the practice of storytelling. Home can exist in our physical bodies. Because of this abundance in possibility, I often root myself somewhere new, and find a sense of belonging in others.

“Ocean. Ocean,
get up. The most beautiful part of your body is where it’s headed. & remember, loneliness is still time spent
with the world. Here’s
the room with everyone in it.
Your dead friends passing
through you like wind
through a wind chime. Here’s a desk
with the gimp leg & a brick
to make it last. Yes, here’s a room
so warm & blood-close,
I swear, you will wake—
& mistake these walls
for skin.”

-excerpt from “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong” by Ocean Vuong. I look forward to his second poetry collection in 2022, “Time is a Mother.”

Bio

Akiko Jackson is from Kahuku, a rural north shore community on the island of O'ahu, Hawai’i. She holds an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, School of the Arts and an MA from California State University - Northridge, Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communications.

Jackson has been the recipient of fellowships and residencies throughout the country, which include the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Roswell Artist in Residence Program, Pottery Northwest, Vermont Studio Center, and the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts. Exhibitions include the 4th World Ceramic Biennale in Incheon Republic of Korea; the Wing Luke Museum of Asian Pacific American Experience in Seattle; the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Los Angeles; and the USC Pacific Asia Museum.

FEATURED WORKS