“Finding New Routes”: Visualizing an Oceanic Okinawa in Laura Kina’s Holding On (2019)

Abstract

This essay argues that Laura Kina’s art series Holding On (2019) makes visible an “oceanic Okinawa”—that is, a discourse in the Okinawan diaspora that draws from Indigenous critiques in the Pacific to challenge the marginalization of Okinawa within the United States–Japan relationship. The methodological approach I use is one that examines Holding On in relation to the larger oceanic context that this series embraces. Yet to analyze Kina’s work this way requires an engagement with Asian American studies’ discussions of Asian settler colonialism given its influence in framing Indigenous and Asian relations in recent years. Holding On affiliates itself with the Pacific to express the collective agency of Okinawans and Indigenous peoples everywhere and disrupt the colonial processes that marginalize Okinawans from their lands.