Student activist Ameya Okamoto on using art to advocate for social justice
22-year-old artist Ameya Okamoto discusses creating healing spaces for communities impacted by injustice. (Courtesy of Ameya Okamoto)
The 22-year-old artist discusses creating healing spaces for communities impacted by injustice.
From memorial portraits to protest posters, 22-year-old Asian American student Ameya Marie Okamoto was using art as a tool for her activism before she even recognised the connection.
“I’ve been obsessed with the question ‘why do people do what they do?’ and unpacking systems of oppression and social control because since I was born; I experienced a lot of unfair treatment from people who were not supposed to treat me that way,” the Chicago-based creative explains.
Ameya was creating artwork and resources for families impacted by racial violence and police brutality when she realised that social justice movements need artists to imagine and illustrate more than just futures. “I learned how protest signs and banners can be used as physical protection or shields in grassroots campaigning and street protests,” she explains. “When marchers hold beautifully illustrated signs, I've found onlookers to be more respectful, curious, and patient.” Determined to create a better way for grassroots organisations to connect with artists, in 2020 she founded the community organisation IRRESISTIBLE to do just that. Using a grant from “Don’t Shoot Portland,” the organisation supports artists from marginalised identities as they create projects for causes they are passionate about.
“[Art] drives culture and drives people to question things. It drives hope and encourages collective rage. When you see people marching on the street with a bunch of beautifully crafted signs, the street becomes an art gallery and compels people to stare and ask questions,” Ameya says.
“[Art] drives culture and drives people to question things. It drives hope and encourages collective rage. When you see people marching on the street with a bunch of beautifully crafted signs, the street becomes an art gallery and compels people to stare and ask questions,” Ameya says. (Courtesy of Ameya Okamoto)
Ameya’s personal creative work is driven by her love for art and community. Painting with acrylic on canvas, she shares captivating stories of her childhood memories and early relationships with her family. With her digital paintings, she emphasizes humanity and nurtures an environment of intense empathy surrounding those we have lost, like in her depiction of Jami Webb mourning her mother who was among the women killed during the Atlanta spa shootings in March 2021 and Sha’India Harris who was an 18-year-old teenage victim of domestic violence in Portland, Oregon in July 2020. She also creates digital prints for organisations like Planned Parenthood to honour activists like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. Using flowers as a medium, Ameya creates and organises vigils and memorial services to honour the lives of individuals lost to injustice. Through these spaces, she helps families and communities heal as they honour their loved ones.
Last summer, Ameya embarked on a journey across the U.S. by railroad to bring to light the unheard stories of anti-Asian violence and discrimination in the country. Titled “Going Home Again,” the young activist’s summer project connected over 100,000 people to stories of Asian Americans in history — from the experiences of Japanese Americans in America during and after the Second World War to the unique cultures and traditions cherished by Vietnamese Americans since 1975.
I had the pleasure of speaking with Ameya to learn more about experiences using art for activism.
Chisom Onyekwere (CO): When did you know you wanted to express yourself and activism through art?
Ameya Okamoto (AO): I think I’ve always been an artist. And as a kid, I was always a very critical, creative thinker — making things, dressing up and putting on clothes. I’ve always been obsessed with the question “why do people do what they do?” and unpacking systems of oppression and social control because since I was born, I experienced a lot of unfair treatment from people who were not supposed to treat me that way.
But even though I was doing creative work, I didn’t consider it art. I was just working with families impacted by the worst thing imaginable to a parent and creating work for them. I was making memorial portraits, creating protest posters. I was teaching artivism workshops to students in Portland about how to create self-portraits centering identity and intersectionality. That’s where I learned about the emergence of art and activism in a very authentic and humanistic way.
(CO): Tell me about the experience of founding the organisation IRRESISTIBLE? What were the challenges you encountered and how did you overcome them?
(AO): IRRESISTIBLE was inspired by author Tony Cade Bambara who says, “The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.” I’ve been working with families impacted by racial violence and police brutality and with organizations in my hometown like “Don't Shoot Portland.” I started working with activist Teressa Raiford when she founded the organisation in 2016, who taught me from the jump to center art and children in equity work. My mentorship with Teressa and my upbringing in Portland are two important pillars for me when I talk about my work with IRRESISTIBLE.
“I created IRRESISTIBLE to connect grassroots organizations with artists who wanted to be more directly involved in social justice work. Intersectionality is everything to me, and so we focused on centering and uplifting the work of BIPOC artists,” Ameya shares. (Courtesy of Ameya Okamoto)
I started the organization in response to the rise of visibility for the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 and the timely demand for artists in racial justice activism. What people don’t always know is how necessary art can be in protest and cultural work and I recognized that our work filled a need.
I created IRRESISTIBLE to connect grassroots organizations with artists who wanted to be more directly involved in social justice work. Intersectionality is everything to me, and so we focused on centering and uplifting the work of BIPOC artists. I brought my closest friends and artistic collaborators together to build my creative team. Because artists need to be paid, I used a grant I received from “Don’t Shoot Portland” and my personal funding — which I’m learning not to do in retrospect — to pay the artists we worked with. During the summer of 2020, we completed over 100 projects. My hope is that more people with access to resources use them to support young creatives to create our work. Young people are the future and I believe that art is our most powerful universal language.
(CO): You recently held a healing space and memorial service for the victims of the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas. What was your creative process during that project?
(AO): I’m very driven by individual relationships and communities. So when I do public art installations and works like the vigil for the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, I share my process with the victims’ families. Since Parkland happened in 2018, I’ve been creating work around gun violence in schools. And my process is very reactive. My art comes from a place of trusting my instinct because I often don’t have time. For instance, in 2017, 17-year-old Quanice Hayes was fatally shot by the police in my hometown Portland, Oregon and I had only 24 hours to create an art piece to commemorate him and share with news outlets that were posting photos of him with obvious bias, like an outdated mugshot. It was valuable for me to replace those images and do my part in reframing biased narratives around the complex humanity of individual people.
We organized the Robb Elementary memorial in under 48 hours. I was in Boston at the time and thankfully built myself a community of musicians and organizers who could show up on short notice.
When it came to the children, I thought, “What are the things that connect us all?” The binders and the backpacks. It was then very obvious to me what visuals I wanted to use and where I was going with it. I put out a call for flowers on social media and pulled inspiration from my past experience working with families to design memorial spaces and create a center of healing for people to share in process and grieve. I created a ring of backpacks and flowers, with two white roses for the teachers and red flowers for the 19 students. We held the vigil two days after the shooting. But that night, I pulled an all-nighter because I was researching and compiled a list of all 21 names. That was the only way I was able to release these art pieces at the same time as everything else was happening.
CO: Advocating for social justice through art is not easy. What are some obstacles you’ve encountered in telling vulnerable stories and highlighting sensitive issues through art? How do you work through these challenges?
(AO): I’m still learning my limits and how to establish boundaries. I have ADHD and it often feels like I can keep going and going nonstop. It’s still way too easy for me to convince myself that I somehow have access to unlimited energy and have infinite capacity. I hyperfocus into my work so that I might sleep for only a couple hours a night and go to bed at like 4 a.m. When I started IRRESISTIBLE, I remember rarely sleeping because I had so much anxiety about how we’re doing and what else can be done.
I’m also only now learning how to protect myself and my energy from people who are not for me. I’m actively learning how to build and preserve personal boundaries with myself and others to protect my peace and prioritize my emotional well-being. Mental health and physical health are so important and not things that I’ve always prioritized. I also think that all artists struggle with self-validation and seeing their own work as valuable and important but the truth is that we all deserve to be treasured and protected, and I think that self-worth and self-love is necessary learning for everyone.
When I worked within the Black Lives Matter movement, I became an artistic first responder for a lot of families impacted by police brutality and racial violence. In retrospect, I think constantly surrounded by so much pain and grief often made me feel guilty and like I was never doing enough. The people who kept me grounded in my work and reminded me to be gentle to myself during these times were often the families. Many of whom I got to develop really personal, long-term relationships with as individuals.
“When I worked within the Black Lives Matter movement, I became an artistic first responder for a lot of families impacted by police brutality and racial violence.”
(CO): This summer, you are journeying across the United States through the railroad to connect with Asian America’s hidden histories, reconnect with your past and unlearn the shame and indifference surrounding your ethnic identity struggle as a one-and-a-half-generation Japanese Chinese American girl growing up in Portland, Oregon, a predominantly White city in America with its complicity in the internment of Japanese Americans and anti-Asian discrimination and violence. What motivated you to embark on this project and what are your next steps?
(AO): After the 2021 Atlanta spa shooting, I was frustrated that people were surprised by the anti-Asian racial motivations behind the violence that happened in Atlanta, where six middle-aged Asian women working at three salon and massage parlors were murdered. I was frustrated that the violence became a turning point for Asian American activism and increased our social visibility. Why is the public so surprised that Asian people experience violent racism?
I was motivated to create the #GoingHomeAgainProject in my search for historical Asian American Visibility. I traveled across America by railroad because during the Gold Rush in the 1840s the first Chinese immigrants in America faced a lot of racism and xenophobic violence,forced to take hard labor jobs building the first Transcontinental Railroad, the largest employer project at the time. I visited historical sites of violence against Asian Americans and moments of civil unrest that we often don’t learn about unless we go searching for our history. In 1982, Vincent Chin, a 27-year-old Chinese-American man, was murdered outside of a McDonald’s restaurant in Highland Park, Detroit because he was mistaken as Japanese by two White men who bludgeoned him to death with a baseball bat in a racially-motivated assault. His was the first federal civil rights trial for an Asian American. Despite the landmark historical significance of his murder, there is no public record of its site. So I went on Google Maps and pinpointed the location using clues from old news articles and elements of enduring architecture in the area in order to set up a memorial to honor him at the original crime scene, which now exists only as an overgrown, unmarked lot.
My next step is to continue this project and get back on the road. I only got summer grant funding to pursue the South and West Coast. There are still so many stories of Asian America that need to be documented and shared. When videos went viral on social media, it was everything to me when families and friends of victims reached out to express gratitude for keeping these stories alive. I would love to connect with local government agencies, public arts organizations and foundations to start designing memorials or monuments shining a light on Asian American identity and immortalizing our history as American history.
For more visual content from Ameya’s “Going Home Again project,” check out her playlist on TikTok.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Read more
