Haruko Okano (born March 26, 1945) is a process-based, collaborative, multidisciplinary, mixed-media artist, poet, community organizer, and activist based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
After her mother’s death, Okano became a permanent ward of the Children’s Aid Society and she lived in a series of foster homes, where she experienced psychological and sexual abuse[3] and was removed from all contact with her Japanese cultural heritage.
Literary critic Eva Darias-Beautell has observed that “Okano’s disconcerting writing and artwork have invariably revolved around the unresolved condition of cultural hybridity, often betraying the traps as well as the possibilities of the search for modes of expression that fall outside normativity.
Her production […] thematizes and speaks to the theoretical debates that surround the condition of the diasporic subject in Canada.”[12] Okano is known for her collaborative, community-based practice, in which her role is that of an artistic facilitator for projects realized in the public realm and with stakeholders and participants outside of the typical confines of the art world.
[15] In 1994, Okano and fellow artists Merle Addison and Pat Beaton from the artist-run grunt gallery initiated a project on East 8th Avenue and Fraser Street in Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant area, in which members from the community designed and hand-carved four hundred red-cedar pickets to be used for a local fence.
[16][17] John Steil and Aileen Stalker note that through community involvement, the “fence in this case is not a barrier, but the demarcation of the garden, the result of many people from culturally different backgrounds working together to beautify and green their neighbourhood, contribute to a sustainable community and lessen the stress of city life.”[17] A collaboration with poet Fred Wah, High(bridi) Tea was a performance that took place at the Nice Café in Vancouver's Mount Pleasant neighbourhood on November 17, 2000.
[18] While completing an artist residency in San Augustine, Mexico, Okano walked the same road every day to and from her studio, and collected materials along the route (including seed pods, flowers, and grasses, as well as bits of trash).