Exhibitions

While the appreciation of Asawa’s work has grown exponentially in the last decade, this retrospective is the first major museum exhibition to fully consider every aspect of the artist’s exquisite, varied, and groundbreaking practice.

Introductions brings together work from students and faculty across the arts department at
Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, featuring artists, designers, makers, and creative thinkers from
Visual Arts, Architecture & Design, and Costume & Fashion Design.

The selection of work on view illustrates Asawa’s exploration of a familiar motif in different materials including wire, paper, plaster, metallic foil, tin, fabric, and more.

This exhibition brings together twenty life cast masks of Asawa’s family members along with their favorite Asawa artwork and a description of why they chose it. The selections range from the playful and unexpected--including a surfboard, jewelry, and a giant Celastic head--to rarely seen sketchbooks, paintings, and wire sculptures, offering a glimpse into the many ways Asawa’s work continues to resonate with those closest to her.

The first European retrospective dedicated to Ruth Asawa (1926–2013), the influential American artist of Japanese descent, offers an extraordinary opportunity to experience the ways in which Asawa transformed the simplest of materials into fascinating object, blurring the boundaries between abstraction and figuration, art and craft, action and contemplation.