Tie Jojima, Ph.D., Curator of Global Contemporary Art at The Phillips Collection, will conduct research to support the first posthumous museum survey in the United States dedicated to Japanese-Brazilian artist Tomie Ohtake (b. Kyoto, 1913; d. São Paulo, 2015). Spanning over six decades of artistic production, the exhibition will feature paintings, prints, sculptures, and documentation of the artist’s extensive public art practice, situating her work within the histories of postwar abstraction, global migration, and the Asian diaspora.

Born and raised in Kyoto, Japan, Ohtake migrated to Brazil under involuntary circumstances following a family visit to Brazil that was extended due to the outbreak of World War II. After raising her children, she began painting at the age of 39 without formal artistic training. As a mother, an immigrant, and a non-Portuguese speaker navigating a conservative and racist society, Ohtake faced significant personal and structural challenges. Yet, despite these obstacles, she pursued her goal to create art. She not only overcame these barriers but also transcended the existing artistic categories and groups working in abstraction in the post-war years in Brazil, eventually becoming one of the most celebrated artists in the country.

By centering a transnational artist who reinvented herself continuously, the project aims to broaden prevailing accounts of postwar abstraction and to offer U.S. audiences a more expansive, nuanced understanding of diasporic modernism.