Cori Nakamura Lin + Laura Kina
Date of Convorsation
06.03.2025
Bios
Cori Nakamura Lin is an artist and organizer based in Chicago IL. Descended from multiple east Asian island peoples and raised in the midwest, she uses visuals and cultural organizing to shape narratives about diaspora, mixedness, and people's movements. Supported by her Nikkei, queer, and midwest communities, Cori makes art that plants seeds of hope and power for future generations. In 2023 she illustrated her sister, Jami Nakamura Lin's, speculative memoir 'The Night Parade' published by Mariner Books/ HarperCollins. Her work has been published on WBEZ Chicago, Borderless Mag, the LA times, PBS Learning Media, the History Channel, and more.
Laura Kina (she/they) is a queer, disabled, mixed-race Okinawan American artist and educator whose work focuses on Asian American art and identity. Kina earned her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is a Vincent de Paul Professor at the Art School at DePaul University in Chicago and coeditor of War Baby / Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art and Queering Contemporary Asian American Art and the illustrator of Lee A. Tonouchi’s award-winning children’s book Okinawan Princess: Da Legend of Hajichi Tattoos. Kina is coeditor/illustrator, along with Jave Yoshimoto, of Word of Mouth: Asian American Artists Sharing Recipes. Kina’s artworks can be found in collections at the Mingei International Museum, Okinawa Prefectural Museum and Art Museum, and The Smithsonian Archives of American Art.