Lynne Yamamoto

Yamamoto's early projects used arrays of intimate, crafted objects to investigate themes involving biography, immigration, femininity and labor. Several, including the multi-work installation Wash Closet (1992–97), centered on the life of her grandmother, who emigrated to Hawai'i in 1914 as a "picture bride" and worked as a laundress. One such work, Untitled, consisted of a row of 280 flat-head nails driven into a wall, each bearing a word. The first word was "arrive," followed by terse, repeated verbs like "bleach," "scrub" and "boil" largely signifying domestic drudgery; the last was "drown." Related pieces from this period include Ten in One Hour (1992), a small wooden tub containing hand-formed clumps of soap embedded with tufts of black hair, and Ringaroundarosie (1997), a wall of projecting, starched shirt sleeves. In the subsequent project, The Long Twilight (1999), Yamamoto traced the mystery of a Japanese woman named Ayame, who studied at Vassar College, returned to Japan and lived with an American friend named Rose, wrote for feminist publications, and disappeared from records in the 1930s. The installation combined artifacts, photographs, Victorian-era furniture and a grouping of tissue-paper dolls with burn holes; critic Jonathan Goodman called it a work of intimations and allusions to love, loss and memory, "making poetry from what is not known." Artforum critic Kirby Gookin described the exhibition Resplendent (2001) as a fusion of "symbols of life, death and rebirth into a poetic amalgam." It was anchored by a wall of cherry blossoms pinned like butterflies and printed with faces of young Japanese men who died in World War II; the allusion to specimen collection and preservation methods was echoed by nine large, missile-like bell jars lined up on the floor, sandblasted with the cherry blossom motif. The iconography reappeared in other contexts, most notably, a photograph of the symbol applied to a kamikaze fighter plane that demonstrated its exploitation by the Japanese military. • Illustration — Lynne Yamamoto, Foreground: Grandfather's Shed Lana’i, Digitally carved and hand finished marble, 15”w x 14”d x 12”h; Background: Insect Immigrants, after Zimmerman (1948) Hawai'i, Found doilies, embroidery, dimensions variable; 2010, from "Genteel," P.P.O.W., New York. For "Genteel" (2007–10), Yamamoto created paradoxical objects that combined humble subjects and cultivated, white-toned materials—a commentary on both the complexity of identity, class and culture in mid-20th-century Hawai'i and colonial notions of purity. The delicate grouping Insect Immigrants pointed to the ecological effects of colonialism through a set of lace doilies, each embroidered with a different insect (e.g., cockroach, bedbug, termite) inadvertently introduced by colonists. In contrast, Yamamoto refashioned ubiquitous, mass-produced foodstuffs (evaporated milk and sardine tins, Spam and Cup Noodles containers) into porcelain icons purged of branding for Provisions, Post-War. Similarly, Grandfather's Shed elevated a vernacular structure originally made from scavenged, at-hand materials into a dignified, durable marble monument.

Yamamoto uses a repertoire of images, materials, objects, and architectonic forms, working from the personal and particular outward to larger narratives involving culture, ethnicity, colonialism and migration. Her working and exhibition methods are fluid and often involve the site-specific reconfiguration of existing and new works across multiple installations and exhibitions. Critics have related Yamamoto's art to movements including minimalism, conceptual art and feminist art. Her work has been described as spare, elegant, restrained and "austere but sensuous," and noted for its use of formal ordering devices like grid systems and a monochromatic palette. These devices are said in different cases to counterbalance or enhance lyrical and evocative aspects of the work that derive from her use of intimate, conceptually driven objects. Reviewers identify a heightened sensitivity to materials and objects as another hallmark of Yamamoto's work. She selects them for their poetic and sensual qualities as well as connotative associations to use, gender, place and era. They often serve as human surrogates or vernacular touchstones indicating wider histories. Yamamoto likewise places emphasis on bodily presence, creating human-scaled works using materials that stimulate the four senses beyond sight. • Illustration — Lynne Yamamoto, Resplendent, Glass, paper, pearlescent paint and historical photographs, Room size 20'w x 40'l x 13'h, 2001, P.P.O.W, New York.

Yamamoto's work is held in the collections of the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Blanton Museum of Art, Bronx Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Museum of Modern Art, RISD Museum, Seattle Central Library, Smith College Museum of Art, and Whitney Museum, among others.