Watercolor on paperexpand_more
The Mr. and Mrs. Bernard M. Granum Fundexpand_more 2023.37
In this intimate self-portrait, Helen Oji depicted her bathing and self-care routine. Oji came of age during a time of intense feminist activism, and she made this work while she was finding her voice as an artist, as a woman, and as a third-generation Japanese American. Those aspects of her identity reveal the image’s power. In 18th- and 19th-century Japanese prints, women bathers were cast as erotic subjects often intended for the male gaze. Oji’s reclaiming of this subject was an assertion of self-empowerment.
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