Between Two Fictions: Kevin Ei-ichi deForest

I’m obsessed with the shape of Kevin Ei-ichi deForest’s paintings. The rounded edges and raw linen canvases populated with physical bumps remind me why I love painting. Exploring the terrain and materiality of a canvas is one of the earliest moments of pure pleasure I recall in my own experiences with art. While speaking with deForest, he described these rounded edges and bumps as an embodiment of the physical quality of the medium, bumps of variation on a flat surface highlighting the objectness of the painting. The uneven terrain of the canvas’ inconsistencies in texture also seeks to undermine the prestige of painting, a challenge to the unblemished clean surface of the canvas. 

deForest’s tongue-in-cheek approach to painting as a medium also occasionally seeps into his subject matter. Dinosaurs appear in his work as a metaphor for his medium: mostly extinct and relegated to museums. deForest’s frequent choice of painting as his medium seems to be a remixing of the Eurocentric artistic canon; his continual rearticulation of the canvas as a visible material chip away at the mystique of painting. Born in Winnipeg to a Japanese mother and Swiss father, Kevin Ei-ichi deForest has been based in Brandon, Manitoba since 2006 where he works as a professor of painting at Brandon University. deForest’s artistic practice is epic in duration and dedication, interrogating questions of hybridity and his own Eurasian biracial identity evolving out of the identity politics movement of the 1990s and through the many chapters of his practice. 

A material exploration of identity appears in the raw linen canvas of his paintings, often exposed through a series of puzzle-piece-like shapes that rupture the picture plane and, as deForest describes, leave an opening for the viewer to burrow into the painting. This recurring theme acts in two ways: these openings leave room for the viewer to dig deeper into the image but also refer to a lack or absence often associated with mixed identity. Much of deForest’s work is informed by his background in architecture, considering structures and built environments as the scenes for his explorations of identity. deForest’s work speaks to a sense of place: a search for comfort, home, and safety across a variety of environments, sometimes welcoming, sometimes not. 

There is a sense of placelessness frequently associated with biracial identity. Two distinct halves can be extracted from one body, resulting in a foggy lineage not built into the hegemonic narrative of “capital letter” identity. Art historian Geeta Kapur points out that histories that do not belong in the (western) universal canon have been framed as sites of fundamental lack.​​¹ Biraciality complicates and undoes many of the archetypal narratives of identity, the primary archetype being that of aryan purity and White identity. The complex nature of biraciality in a Eurocentric context is that because Whiteness is present, one can’t be successfully othered. Expressed differently: you can’t be easily identified by the familiar tropes of culture and race. Your very existence complicates things. deForest pushes this notion further with the appearance of monsters in his work, often using Godzilla-like creatures from Japanese and North American pop culture. For deForest, the monster is a response to how the hybrid body is understood; a proximity to Whiteness, much like the Hollywood depictions of Godzilla, King Kong, and the little grey aliens from outer space who embody the colonizers’ fear of the unknown when they invade the bustling metropolises of the “known world.” 

This line of questioning appears consistently in the materiality of deForest’s work. He addresses the concept of lack and placelessness through the recurring use of the void in his paintings. The exposure of raw canvas invites the viewer to, again, burrow into the work, climb into the world deForest is creating to read it at their leisure. The voids and burrows on the painted surface are sometimes eating away at the surface of the canvas, sometimes populated with animals, sometimes represented as a trap. In each version, both the material exposure of the raw canvas and the representation of the burrow seem to problematize the den as home. A burrow is linked to settlement, literally digging a hole to put down roots, to force a space for oneself into the land for an extended period of time. Animals dig warrens for protection from predators and harsh environments. There is a diversity of cultural factors involved with the geography of place. Cultural theorist Minelle Mahtani frames this spatial consideration, asking the question: “How does space constrict, refuse, conform to, allow, or create opportunities for different kinds of racial reconfigurations?”​​² If being mixed race is to lack both Whiteness and otherness, deForest’s work seeks to populate this lack with a sense of infinite possibility. The voids in deForest’s paintings, then, do not suggest hidey-holes but instead propose an infinite space, a space of freedom, an interstitial space filled with potential. 

What are the implications of burrowing into a place? In an email exchange, deForest and I spoke about finding a sense of place here on the prairies. He asked me, as someone newly arrived from Toronto, how I was adjusting to life in Regina. As a biracial person, did I feel conspicuous? I pondered this question. Part of the fogginess I associate with a biracial existence is the sense that you haven’t been anywhere very long, so in that respect, my sense of conspicuousness has not changed. deForest told me: “It took me fifteen years to finally own up to calling Brandon my home. And sure enough, the day after I owned up to that, a teepee raised on the university campus for a conference was burned down by local redneck haters. Luckily there was a surge in community response and five new teepees were put up the next day. That’s my town.” Pulling from deForest’s recollection of his experience, I see that there is a point when you notice the place in your placeless experience, and though perhaps you populate the interstices, there are many implications related to finding a place for oneself in a land that isn’t yours for the taking.

What is the placelessness of biraciality? It is a history not moored to a land, a history caught between settler and unsettled. What are the stakes of feeling placeless on settled land? What does it mean to identify with a place? There are only ever two places: Whiteness and otherness. The voids in deForest’s paintings can be read as both lack and infinite possibility. The material void of deForest’s paintings are representations of the perceived void that exists between Whiteness and otherness. In his work, deForest’s hope is to find a cultural place where he, and many others, can exist. However, in his identification with a physical place, there is a melancholy reminder of the relationship to racial violence and the production of White identity in the presence of an Other, and the ways in which Whiteness is perpetuated. I think the voids suggest that we are always working from mixed and multiple positions, and this is made much more feasible within the space of the void than anywhere else. There is nothing so tidy and simple as what is contained within the ecology of a painting, and deForest seeks to make that felt through his material choices, consistently rupturing the world of the canvas to remix any sense of settlement. 

Lillian O’Brien Davis is a curator and writer from Toronto, ON, currently based in Regina, SK, Treaty 4 Territory.

1. Geeta Kapur, “‘Recursive Narrative: Ways of Producing Art History’ by Geeta Kapur,” Haus Der Kunst, December 12, 2016, postwar.hausderkunst.de/blog/recursive-narrative-ways-of- producing-art-history-by-geeta-kapur.
2. Minelle Mahtani, Mixed Race Amnesia: Resisting the Romanticization of Multiraciality (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2015).

This article is published in issue 37.3 of BlackFlash magazine. Get this issue