MIXED: PORTRAITS OF MULTIRACIAL KIDS BY KIP FULBECK TO PREMIERE MARCH 20

A new exhibition, Mixed: Portraits of Multiracial Kids by Kip Fulbeck, featuring over 70 framed photographic images of children of multiple racial heritage and their statements or drawings, will premiere at the Japanese American National Museum on Saturday, March 20, with activities from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The exhibition runs through September 26, 2010.

Organized by the National Museum and Kip Fulbeck, an award-winning artist, performer, and professor of art at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Mixed is intended to be family-friendly, thoughtful and playful. Along with portraits and statements that represent humorous, honest and revealing declarations of individual identity, the exhibition has several hands-on components that provide opportunities for visitors to leave behind their own unique mark, including an interactive sculpture where visitors can post messages and/or images and the chance at selected times for individuals to leave their handprints on the wall of the exhibition.

"This is a project about identity," Fulbeck wrote. "About representing ourselves as we really are. And while the kids here are all beautiful, I didn’t set out to make a show about beautiful ethnically mixed kids. I wanted to capture the beauty of these children beyond their physical attributes. I wanted to shoot their enthusiasms, their playfulness, their messiness, their crankiness, their imagination, and their hope. I wanted to photograph them as them, not as them getting photographed."

Fulbeck, who also has created a book under the same title as the exhibition, is known as a leading artist and filmmaker on the subject of mixed race identity and maintains a number of on-going projects, including the Web site, http://thehapaproject.com/. Mixed is his latest project.

"The Japanese American National Museum is extremely pleased to once again collaborate with Kip Fulbeck on creating a new exhibition," said Akemi Kikumura Yano, President & CEO of the National Museum. "Kip’s exhibitions are very accessible and appropriate for entire families. Yet the underlying themes, especially concerning individual identity, are fundamental to all of us as people. I expect that visitors to Mixed will be both delighted and profoundly moved by the presentation."

Besides the March 20 opening day activities, featuring a presentation and book signing by Fulbeck, the exhibition will also have a second full day of activities on Saturday, June 12. This event is organized in conjunction with the National Museum’s on-going Target Free Family Saturdays and the Mixed Roots and Literary Film Festival. The highlight of the day’s schedule will be an appearance by educator Dr. Maya Soetoro-Ng, President Obama’s sister, who will read excerpts from her unpublished children’s book. Later in the evening she will engage in a conversation with Fulbeck on subject of identity, family and being multiracial in America today. The conversation is a ticketed event.

Soetoro-Ng wrote the foreword to Fulbeck’s book, Mixed: Portraits of Multiracial Kids, and observed, "There are advantages and disadvantages to being mixed. On one hand, mixed kids have an expanded worldview; on the other hand, they may feel torn by divided loyalties. I envied those around me who had a clear community. There is great value in seeing ourselves reflected in others and knowing that there is some shared experience between us and others 'out there.' That is why Kip Fulbeck is important and why Mixed is a book that matters. It is important that we be given an opportunity to name ourselves. Mixed is a book I wish I had."

The June 12 event will also commemorate Loving Day, recalling the Supreme Court decision, Loving v. Virginia, in 1967 that overturned laws that prohibited people of different races from marrying. More information on March 20 and June 12 is available at www.janm.org.

Premiere sponsorship for Mixed: Portraits of Multiracial Kids by Kip Fulbeck was generously provided by the MetLife Foundation, Daruma Management Assets, Inc., and Gordon Yamate and Deborah Shiba, DDS. The reception sponsors are Honest Beverages and Mikawaya, while the media sponsors are the Los Angeles Downtown News, the Rafu Shimpo and LA18.

Mixed is the follow-up to the extremely popular 2006 National Museum exhibition, kip fulbeck: part asian, 100% hapa, which drew thousands of visitors. That presentation also featured photographic portraits of individuals of multiracial heritage and their individual responses to the question people often asked them: "What are you?" Visitors to the exhibition were given the opportunity to have their own Polaroid photographs taken and to answer that same question, regardless of their background. The galleries filled with these contributions.

With the support of the National Museum, a traveling version of that original exhibition has been taken to the East Coast to New York University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It will open on April 2, 2010, at the Field Museum in Chicago, and run through September 6, 2010. For more information on the exhibition, kip fulbeck: part asian, 100% hapa, go to http://www.janm.org/exhibits/kipfulbeck/home.

Mixed: Portraits of Multiracial Kids by Kip Fulbeck features 70 framed and matted 20” x 20” portraits and four 60” x 60” large mounted prints along with the individual statements or drawings by the subjects.

Visitors will have the opportunity to create their own statements and images to add to an interactive sculpture in the exhibition. The sculpture, based loosely on the DNA double helix is meant to grow and evolve in much the same way as the scientific concept of DNA and inherited traits has been tied to personal identity over the years. In an art-making area, visitors at selected times will be able to leave their handprints on a gallery wall which will feature a timeline marking the major milestones in multiracial history.

A special feature will be the electroluminescent location of ancestry activity. Each portrait will be connected to a world map mounted on the floor. By pressing different buttons, lights will illuminate the various countries of ancestry of the portrait subjects.

On opening day, the National Museum will set up a video station. Visitors will have one minute to react to one of a several questions, such as "Who are you?"; "How would you describe yourself?"; and, "What did you think of the show?" The footage will then edited and displayed the video on a monitor through the run of the exhibition.

Kip Fulbeck is an American artist, slam poet, and filmmaker. A renowned public speaker, he has been featured on CNN, MTV, and PBS, and has performed and exhibited throughout the world. He is currently a professor of Art at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he received the university’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2009.

Kip is also an avid surfer, guitar player, motorcycle rider, ocean lifeguard, and pug enthusiast. He is the author of several books including Mixed: Portraits of Multiracial Kids; Part Asian, 100% Hapa; and Permanence: Tattoo Portraits, and the director of a dozen short films including Banana Split and Lilo & Me. A complete overachiever despite being only half Asian, Kip is also an internationally ranked Masters swimmer.