The Unknown Citizen

2023

Oscillating spot light, Unprimed canvas, Blinking light bulb, Transparency inkjet print, Sumi-ink on clear mylar, 2-ch audio

15’x22’x12’

The Unknown Citizen is a multimedia installation that contains various elements that contrast individuality with a crafted collective ideal. A sweeping spotlight slowly reveals every new element hidden behind a swath of unmarked canvas – lists of numbers, ghostly impressions of various clothing items, and a series of flashing light bulbs – and acts as a search light hunting throughout the night for any escapees, groups to be potential next victims, and echoes our own searching through the past. 

Featured are columns of identification numbers from the 127,000 prisoners of the Japanese internment camps juxtaposed with the imprints of various pieces of clothing, and a series of ten flashing light bulbs – representing the ten internment camps situated in the United States from California to Arkansas. The numbers also reference the larger prison system in use in the United States – an institution that uses the internment camps for their blueprints. 

The captured shadows of clothing items depict an imagined and hidden traditional nuclear family but their bodies are lost to us. Instead we see the remnants of the clothing here as a series of ghostly textures both unique yet strangely uniform. To capture these ghostly impressions, Ito soaked these clothing items in Sumi ink and pressed them onto the sheets of mylar, which when illuminated, form the familiar yet spectral shapes.

The symbolism of the imagery shows an often too common recipe used since the invention of modern warfare – to dehumanize others and create a paradigm where harming others not only becomes acceptable but desirable; this is the recipe for cultural scapegoats still in use today as we saw in the Muslim Ban. The Unknown Citizen comes together to present a snapshot of the past and the systematic paradigms utilized to repeat it. 

Accompanying the installation is a sound piece made from sampled audio of the 1943 U.S. government-produced film, Japanese Relocation. In the film, the narrator suggests that the Japanese internment process was democratic and humane, stating that the imprisonment was done “with real consideration for the people involved”. For the installation, the sampled audio was heavily modified and stretched to an hour long audio piece.