Sunday, July 19, 2026 at 12:00 AM to Thursday, August 26, 2027 at 11:59 PM
18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica
HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT: Manzanar’s Camo Net Factory ****July 19, 2026 - August 26, 2026**** **Hearth Gallery -18th Street Arts Center** This exhibition at 18th Street Arts Center emerges from performance artist Dan Kwong’s *Manzanar Baseball* *Project *and focuses on the camouflage net weaving factory operated at Manzanar National Historic Site, one of the ten major internment camps where over 10,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly incarcerated by the U.S. government during World War II. Within all the camps, incarcerees worked in various labor programs, including the production of camouflage nets for the U.S. military. Manzanar’s camo net factory was a short-lived program intended to support the U.S. war effort, but which unexpectedly created heated internal divisions and exacerbated conflicts within the Japanese American community. Within the Artists Hearth at 18th Street Arts Center, Kwong has re-created a scaled-down version of the Manzanar camouflage net factory. A hands-on workshop facilitated by Kwong and artist Hana van der Steur (both descendants of fiber artist and Manzanar camo net worker Momo Nagano) invited participants to work together and weave their own improvisational camouflage nets as reflections on identity, visibility, and connection. Through both looking and making, the exhibition asks how histories of oppression and survival continue to shape cultural consciousness, and how creativity can provide opportunities for transformation and collective repair. **Artists Bio** Co-facilitator Hana van der Steur is a multidisciplinary artist with wide-ranging interests in two and three-dimensional media, most recently, experimental ceramic sculpture. Her current projects explore the boundary between nature and artifice, and between real and imagined histories of place, from tourist attractions among the coastal redwoods to her grandmother’s home and studio in Silverlake. Hana co-facilitated the participatory site-specific camouflage net art installation at the inaugural Manzanar baseball doubleheader in 2024. She is the granddaughter of fiber artist Momo Nagano (1925-2010), who was an incarceree and camouflage net factory worker in Manzanar. Co-facilitator Dan Kwong is an award-winning performance artist and playwright/director/ documentary producer/community activist. He is Associate Artistic Director of multicultural performing arts organization Great Leap, Mentor Resident Artist at 18th Street Arts Center, and a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Dan is founder and director of the Manzanar Baseball Project and has led the restoration of Manzanar’s baseball field since 2023. He is the son of fiber artist Momo Nagano. *dkbb12@aol.com* This program is presented by 18th Street Arts Center with a generous CAC Impact Grant, as part of the Manzanar Baseball Project directed by Dan Kwong and produced by Great Leap.