Yellow Fever

Roger Shimomura, artist

born 1939

Yellow Fever, 2019

Where object was made: United States

Material/technique: acrylic; canvas

Credit line: Gift of the artist

Accession number: 2025.0093

Not on display

Add to portfolio

If you wish to reproduce this image, please submit an image request

Label texts

Staging Shimomura

This new painting catalogues the staggering plethora of source material drawn from personal memories and popular culture used by Shimomura throughout his artistic career.

Staging Shimomura

This new painting catalogues the staggering plethora of source material drawn from personal memories and popular culture used by Shimomura throughout his artistic career.

Exhibition Label: Oct-2025 Kris Ercums
Roger Shimomura’s paintings draw on personal memory, historical trauma, and popular culture to confront and critique racial stereotypes. As a sansei (third-generation Japanese American), he reimagines caricatures of Asians in American media—buck-toothed “Japs,” sinister villains, and submissive geishas—through irony and exaggeration. By juxtaposing these tropes with icons like Mickey Mouse or Coca-Cola, Shimomura exposes the contradictions of racism and cultural identity, transforming harmful images into powerful commentary on prejudice and representation in American visual culture.