Tuesday Tea: The Arts and Activism of Maruki Toshi

Tuesday, November 16, 2021 at 3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.

Charlotte Eubanks gives a free Zoom webinar on an artist whose life spanned much of the tumultuous history of 20th-century Japan. Like Japan in the last century, artist, activist, and memoirist Maruki Toshi performed a life in three acts. In Act I, set in the Japanese Imperial Mandate in Micronesia in 1940, she is a fledgling sketch artist, using her pencil to capture the lines of colonial Yapese bodies. In Act II, set during the American-led occupation circa 1950, she is an artist-correspondent for socialist newspapers covering the War Crime Tribunals. And in Act III, set in the global protest culture of the 1960s, she collaborates in the production of wall-sized murals showing the irradiated bodies of atomic blast victims.

This talk introduces Toshi’s art and activism, providing context for two works by Toshi that are featured in the exhibition Recent Acquistions: Maruki Toshi, Toko Shinoda, Mayumi Oda.

Eubanks is a professor of comparative literature, Japanese, and Asian Studies at Pennsylvania State University. Following her talk, there will be an audience Q&A moderated by Kevin R. E. Greenwood, Joan L. Danforth Curator of Asian Art, and Ann Sherif, professor of Japanese at Oberlin College.

This event is online only. Preregistration is required.