Artist Profile: Tomiko Jones

Tomiko Jones’ photography and multidisciplinary installations explore social, cultural, and geopolitical transitions, considering the twin crises of too much and too little in the age of climate change. Running themes of ecological concerns, questions of belonging, and activated cultural traditions are present throughout her projects.

 Jones was a Resident Artist at Museé Niépce, and a Fellow at The Camargo Foundation, France. Jones received her MFA and Certificate in Museum Studies from the University of Arizona, Tucson, and has taught in several locations across the United States. She is currently an Associate Professor, Vilas Professorship at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Would you be willing to share one of your first memories where you recognized how important place was to you?

Growing up, I always felt torn between what I thought of as “home” and the place I was currently living. Hawai’i was home, the place I was living was temporary, but then there was this third piece of the unknown exploration. Every summer, my parents would pack the car, and we would set forth in a camper to explore the treasures of the nation, our public lands. We visited what my father called  “feats of human engineering” – dams, bridges, and buildings–on our way to admire “feats of nature” like Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Niagara Falls. Many miles of open land lay between our excursions, and watching the American landscape pass by had a profound effect on me over the years. I would want to stop and explore, but as we were always headed for a destination, there was never enough time. This created in me a longing to return.

Place and tradition are very important to my mother. Our family migrated from Japan and worked the sugar cane fields on the Big Island of Hawai’i since the early 1900s. When she left Hawai’i to attend nursing school in Los Angeles, she promised she would see her parents every year no matter what. Although her father passed away ten years later, she kept that promise with her mother, and for the first twenty years of my life we either visited our grandmother in Hawai’i or she joined us on a road trip on the mainland. We loved traveling with her. She was both patient and enthusiastic about every stop we made, and started a souvenir spoon collection. Being legally blind, I did not consider the irony of her “seeing” America, one that she could only feel and respond to in a way we could not understand. 

How has community shaped your work?

Much of my creative research is in the narratives of constructing cultural identity, whether it is through my own lineage connected to migration patterns or living and working in artist communities and activist circles.  My family is integrated in my work through lived experience, and supportive jumping in when I needed help. Besides being in the work, I remember framing an entire show in my parent’s garage, my mom cleaning glass and my dad framing, and this is just one example I can think of. I can’t imagine what my work would be without the community. If I could chapter my practice it would be something like this- starting at about 16 years old when my community was alternative music shows, backyard skate parks, and underground fashion shows.

I left high school early and began attending college in Bellingham, Washington. Coming of age on the west coast during the environmental movement, the quincentennial marking indigenous resistance, the politics of representation, third wave feminism, critical media studies and the Culture Wars left a deep impression that continues to influence my work to this day. I was active in the environmental movement. I studied Cultural Anthropology and Japanese language. I first worked in a community darkroom under the stairwell of a building until I was able to take classes, forming a bond with the photography professor Robert Embrey, who continued to work with me independently throughout my studies.

After graduating,  I joined a darkroom community and after I saved enough money, I went to Hawai’i. Despite my grandmother’s passing, I felt determined to fulfill the promise of summers together, and it began a long cycle of return trips to document home, relatives and archive family photographs. I returned to the West Coast and I worked in a high-end commercial lab in Seattle with a crew of highly creative folks, and this work environment was like a built-in community. I had a freelance business, I photographed the subculture I lived in, including countless bands, dancers and performers, and was a house photographer for The Showbox, a venue in Seattle. I participated in community-generated exhibitions and events, and lived in a live/work warehouse. These are still “the good old days” when artist-run spaces weren’t so daunting and expensive! I also had an informal group of female photographers, where we supported one another’s technical and professional needs in a field that was male-dominated and at times, hostile.

This is going to get long!

But I can’t continue without talking about the activist community, the growing unrest of the anti-globalization movement seeking global equity. I was captivated by the possibility of collaborative or collective power as an artistic process, the implementation of performance as social practice, and drawn to the growing movement in temporary autonomous zones (TAZ) in events such as Burning Man and in parallel within political structures such as the Zapatista Autonomous Zone. Eventually, I attended graduate school at the University of Arizona, studying under the mentorship of studio Professors Sama Alshaibi and Frank Gohlke, and revisited my interest in museums, completing the Certificate of Museum Studies with mentorship from Dr. Sarah Moore, Curator Dr. Britt Salveson and Director Dr. Doug Nickel. My cohort was a strong community and we organized exhibitions every semester. Since then began the transience of residencies and teaching positions. The community is still an important part of my work, often in a more site-specific temporary immersion where listening and observing become key practices. I find community with my peers in the organization Society for Photographic Education, which has been a place of friends for nearly two decades.

What other art-forms influence the work you make and how you make these images?  

I think I answered this above! Music, performance, reading and writing!

What are 2 to 3 exhibitions, concerts, books and/or book talks, spoken word events and/or films you're hoping to check out this season in Wisconsin or virtually?

I have been working intensely towards the opening of my solo exhibition “The Intimate Infinite” which opens January 3 at the Center for Visual Art in Denver, CO. The work weaves together nine bodies of work made over twenty years.

I am out of town a lot during the early winter, but I am can’t wait to see Kevin Miyazaki, “December 7, 1941 - February 22, 2025” at Hawthorn Contemporary in Milwaukee. The show is up NOW and Kevin will host a gallery talk on Saturday, January 25th, 4pm. Wednesday, February 19 marks the Day of Remembrance, with light snacks and a reading (via Zoom) by Japanese American poet Brandon Shimoda.

Opening January 24 at Elmhurst Art Museum Sustenance & Land: Five Artists Consider Our Relationship with the Earth, a group exhibition I am in, which includes new work from my Peninsula State Park residency in August 2025. I am looking forward to seeing the work of the artists Barbara Ciurej + Lindsay Lochman, Chunbo Zhang, Lydia Cheshewalla, Claire Pentecost.