Oklahoma's Immigrant Women Artists

About the Collection

The "Immigrant Women Artists in Oklahoma" Oral History Project (IWA) looks at the work of first-generation immigrant women artists living in Oklahoma. This series reveals how these women’s complex positioning and diverse identities shape their art and add a global dimension to the cultural ecosystem of the state.

This project consists of eleven oral history interviews recorded remotely in video and audio format in 2020-2021 during the COVID-19 global pandemic. Participants include ten women artists and one narrator representing arts supports networks in the state which hail from a variety of countries: Brazil, Ethiopia, Korea, Japan, Pakistan, Poland and Venezuela. Represented art work includes but is not confined to photography, painting and printmaking, dance choreography, installation art, furniture and large scale public sculpture. One theme that unites the work of many of these artists is a focus on women’s identity and cultural positioning in their countries of origin and their adopted homeland(s).

The immigrant experience of adaptation, transculturation, and syncretic creation acquires even more concrete meaning through the material production of art. IWA artists tend to inhabit the major urban areas of the state, specifically Tulsa and Oklahoma City where their artistic impact far exceeds their numbers. They are frequent winners of local, regional and national arts grants and awards, and their work can be found in Oklahoma museums, galleries, libraries and parks and the State Capitol, particularly, at the Oklahoma Supreme Court.

While this project was initially conceived as part of the Archie Green Occupational Folklife series for the Library of Congress, these interviews yield surprising insights into the connection of art making and self-actualization. One unexpected thematic revelation was the relatively early age at which most of these women arrived in the U.S. and the pivotal importance of American higher education in enabling them to consider art as a career. Another thread was the differing expectations held by their families of origin, their new communities of residence and the expectations they created for themselves. The artists in this series literally embody the concept of art as cultural work: debunking national and ethnic stereotypes and challenging audiences to a more nuanced understanding of the geopolitical complexities of the world.

Listen to this November 2021 episode of Amplified Oklahoma to hear more about this interview series:

Episode 64: Immigrant Women Artists in Oklahoma

This project is supported by the Archie Green Fellowship of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

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Oklahoma Oral History Research Program
207 Edmon Low Library
Oklahoma State University
Stillwater, OK 74078
Phone: 405-744-7685
liboh@okstate.edu

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