Joanna Kao’s career is a long list of accomplishments.  The Chinese-American artist, who received her MFA in painting from Boston University in 1975, has since exhibited in solo and group shows across the U.S. and in nearly every corner of the globe from China to Cuba.  Kao, who has made JP her home for the past decade, has also curated multiple exhibitions and has been the recipient of numerous awards and residencies both at home and abroad.

During a visit to Kao’s home, the agreeable artist described the course of her remarkable life and deciphered her prodigious artistic output that lay in stacks and hung in layers on the walls of her studio. As if she hasn’t before, after 30 years of working as an art teacher at the Winsor School, the now retired Kao said that she finally has time to pursue her art, which is both personal and highly political.

Most recently, during this fall’s JP Open Studios, Kao displayed a single untitled monotype at the “Crisis and Response" exhibition, a show of political art that was held at Red Sun Press. The piece, one of many more in the series that she produced, depicts two amputated figures that are the color of dried blood.

“They are meant to suggest torture, scars, rape,” said Kao.  “They’re deliberately ambiguous.”

Earlier this autumn, Kao held a solo exhibition entitled “Hidden Geometry” at the Newton Free Library that examined her identity as a Chinese-American woman and the dynamics of her family. 

Kao grew up in Los Angeles, she recounted, where both she and her immigrant parents encountered discrimination. 

“We were called “Japs” as kids,” she stated. “We had no other family.“

The mixed media pieces that comprise “Hidden Geometry,” as she demonstrated, originated with a text by John Ruskin called “The Elements of Perspective."  Kao altered the book, incorporating images from her family history in pieces such as “Nuclear Family” and “Double Happiness” to investigate themes such as filial piety, the status of women in Chinese society, and what she called her own self-hatred.

“I wanted to be American,” she stated. “I had assumed that my parents’ beliefs were based on personal idiosyncrasy,” she explained.  “It was only years later that I understood that larger cultural patterns influenced them.” 

In Kao’s “Out of the Depths” series, the artist created architectural
images such as “Façade” and “Prairie House” to envision a dreamlike disconnected atmosphere.  Kao's "Collateral Damage" series depicts the unintentional destruction that is inflicted upon civilians.  Another body of her work is comprised of hybrid images of Mao, Taoism and Buddhism. 

Kao’s moving “Children of Katrina” series is a work in progress that depicts both the power of nature and the faces of those affected by its fury.

The tragedy in New Orleans, she said, “was due to political greed.  I was so enraged at Bush,” she fumed.

On China’s ascendancy as a political and economic power, Kao stated that she can be proud that the country is no longer weak and vulnerable to exploitation by foreign powers.

“And yet they are repeating our mistakes,” she concluded.  “With all of the cars, the pollution . . . There’s a lot of corruption and you cannot speak freely.  China would be more trustworthy if it were democratic – but it’s a totalitarian state.”