Biography

Reiko Fujii was born in 1950 in Riverside, California, four years after her parents, grandparents, great grandparents and other relatives were released from their imprisonment in WWII American concentration camps. Her life and art have forever been intertwined with the influence of the grave injustice that was forced upon her family and over 125,000 others of Japanese ancestry by the United States government.  

Fujii’s art reflects a determination to preserve stories…..the stories of her ancestors, the stories of the Japanese American experience. Her responsibility as an artist is to tell stories that go beyond the personal and touch the universal of who we are and from where we came. Ultimately, these imprints inhabit her and become part of her own story as expressed in kiln-formed glass, performance, installation art, photography, video, documentaries, and book arts.

Her interdisciplinary technique of expressing herself encourages interplay between art and viewer, between story and audience, creating a meeting point where past and present can engage to further the narrative, carrying it forward into the future.