Miki Foster

• 
• 
• 

I lived most of my life in Seattle apart of the only mainland-based section of my family. The rest of my family lives in Hawaii. From very early in my life I saw how tourism and capitalism affected my life; these industries impacted when and how much I got to see my family. The tourist industry is often framed as a big boon to the people in Hawaii and I began to see the industry was also a very destructive and disabling force. As a consequence of my experience in/not in Hawaii I’m very critical of utopic constructions.

At the current moment I’m interested in creating interactive pieces that discuss the politics of violence, issues of embodiment, and technology and globalization. Much of my past work focuses on complex intersections of identity and the politics of identity from the borders and on the margins. I’m interested in the ways complex representation can oppose hegemonic constructions and binaries as well as work as powerful spaces for solidarity and activism for communities. My work “Trace Elements” was created as a means for me and other Japanese-Americans to dialogue with our histories and explore commonly repressed issues such as mixed-race identity (or Hapa), class and labor, land and racial hierarchies.

The work I completed in 2007 was a collaborative performance I organized on Queer People of Color identity and politics. The function of the piece was to create dialogues surrounding multiple and complex intersections of identity that also highlighted issues surrounding visibility, representation and institutional oppression. For The last five years I’ve been interested in primarily narrative film and experimental non-fiction video art, poetry and graphic novels. These mediums spoke to me as means to create visual narratives. In 2006 I began to experiment with performance art and digital music which lead me to digital art and new media.