In the wake of World War II panic and paranoia, the U.S. government feared that Japanese Americans would commit acts of sabotage against the nation. Along with some 120,000 Japanese Americans living in the western part of the country, Ruth Asawa (1926-2013) and her family—separated from their father, who was sent to a camp in New Mexico—were uprooted in 1942 and sent to another internment camp hastily organized at the Santa Anita race track in Arcadia, California. There, Asawa and her siblings lived in two horse stalls for five months.
Since Asawa no longer had to work on the farm, she began to fill her days by drawing. “Among the detainees were animators from the Walt Disney Studios, who taught art in the grandstands of the race track,” says the artist’s estate. “In September, the Asawa family was sent by train to an incarceration camp in Rohwer, Arkansas, where Ruth continued to spend most of her free time painting and drawing.” This creative practice would shape the rest of her life.
At David Zwirner in Hong Kong, a new exhibition titled Doing Is Living celebrates Asawa’s renowned wire sculptures (previously) and intimate works on paper. The show marks the first solo presentation of her work in Greater China, focusing on the artist’s connection with the natural world.
“I study nature and a lot of these forms come from observing plants,” Asawa said in a 1995 interview. “I really look at nature, and I just do it as I see it. I draw something on paper. And then I am able to take a wire line and go into the air and define the air without stealing it from anyone.”
Asawa began developing her wire sculptures in the 1940s while a student at Black Mountain College. An experimental liberal arts school nestled in the hills of rural North Carolina, the college was a progressive program designed to shape young people into well-rounded individuals who could think critically as they proceeded into society.
The school centered democratic processes, placing the responsibility for education with the students themselves, who often weighed in on admissions and new faculty selections. Students were expected to contribute to everyday operations by working on the farm, cooking in the kitchen, and constructing school buildings and furniture as needed.
Asawa enrolled at BMC in 1946 and spent three years there. “Teachers there were practicing artists,” she said. “There was no separation between studying, performing the daily chores, and relating to many art forms.” She counted painter Josef Albers, inventor Buckminster Fuller, mathematician Max Dehn—and many others—among lifelong influences. “Through them, I came to understand the total commitment required if one must be an artist,” she added.
“For Asawa, her time at Black Mountain was so transformative because its culture gave her the right to do anything she wanted to do,” says her estate, adding:
For the first time, she was expected to have an opinion. She encountered teachers who gave her the freedom and responsibility to fail or succeed as only she could, as a unique individual. She lived among strong, creative women—Trude Guermonprez, Anni Albers, and Marguerite Wildenhain, to name a few—who lived as working artists. Black Mountain College gave her the courage to become an artist and the creed by which she would live the rest of her life.
In late 1949, after her time at the college, Asawa moved to San Francisco with Albert Lanier, whom she soon married. In the 1950s, prestigious exhibitions like the Whitney Biennial and a show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art introduced her work to a growing audience. Asawa was also passionate about education, and she became the driving force behind the creation of the San Francisco School of the Arts.
When she began working with wire, Asawa experimented with relatively conventional basket designs before moving into biomorphic, abstract works that could be strung from the ceiling. She learned a crochet technique in Toluca, Mexico, where she visited Josef Albers in 1947 while he was on sabbatical.
Many of her works incorporate nested, membrane-like “form-within-a-form” layers in which elements appear to fold in on themselves or turn inside-out. Asawa later remarked, “What I was excited by was that I could make a shape that was inside and outside at the same time.”
Doing Is Living highlights intricate, ethereal pieces that merge elements of textile and sculpture. Delicate and airy, her compositions “range from elaborate multi-lobed compositions to small spheres and billowing conical forms that require extreme technical dexterity to achieve,” the gallery says. Highlights also include her heavier tied-wire pieces, which she began making in 1962, which showcase branch-like organic forms and biological phenomena.
“After having been gifted a desert plant whose branches split exponentially as they grew, Asawa quickly became frustrated by her attempts to replicate its structure in two dimensions,” the gallery says. “Instead, she utilized industrial wire as a means of mimicking the form through sculpture and, in doing so, studying its shape.” Asawa was fascinated by the permeability of the sculptures and the viewer’s ability to look through them, like seeing the sky between tree branches.
“Relentlessly experimental across a variety of mediums, Asawa moved effortlessly between abstract and figurative registers in both two and three dimensions,” the gallery says. The work in this show spans five decades and exemplifies the range of media and techniques she employed in her career.
Doing Is Living continues through February 22. Learn more about the exhibition on David Zwirner’s website, and dive further into Asawa’s work and biography on her estate’s website.
