Laura Kina

LAURA KINA is a Vincent de Paul Professor of Art, Media, and Design at DePaul University and co-editor of War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art (University of Washington Press, 2013).
A graduate of University of Illinois at Chicago (MFA 2001) and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA 1994), her solo shows include: Blue Hawaii (The Harold B. Lemmerman Gallery at New Jersey City University, NJ 2015, The Martha and Robert Fogelman Galleries of Contemporary Art at the University of Memphis, TN 2015); Sugar (Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, 2010); A Many-Splendored Thing (Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago, IL 2010); Aloha Dreams and Hapa Soap Operas (Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts, Miami, FL 2007 and 2003); and Loving (Grand Projects, New Haven, CT 2006). Her two-woman show, Indigo: Laura Kina and Shelly Jyoti, toured through three venues in India between 2009-2010 and was exhibited in Seattle and Miami in 2011, Maryland and at the Chicago Cultural Center in 2013.
Born in Riverside, California in 1973 to an Okinawan father from Pi’ihonua, Hawai’i and a Spanish-Basque/Anglo mother from the Pacific Northwest, she was raised in Poulsbo, WA, a small Norwegian town near Seattle. The artist currently lives and works in Chicago, Illinois.
For the past 20 years, Kina has been involved in Asian American arts organizations including DestinAsian, Asian American Artists Collective-Chicago, Foundation for Asian American Independent Media, Diasporic Asian Arts Network, and the International Network for Diasporic Asian Art Research. She is currently a board member of The Japanese American Service Committee in Chicago, a founding member of the Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) bi-annual conference and founding editor of the Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies (UC Santa Barbara).

1150 W. Fullerton #317
Chicago, IL 60659