IDENTITIES is a photography + interview project started with Hidemi Takagi’s family, a blend of Japanese and Haitian ancestry during the pandemic and portraying other biracial/multiracial teenage subjects. She seeks to envision deep roots and explore issues of mixed-race identities.
Takagi has been working with mixed-race teenagers for IDENTITIES with their parents’ consent, interviewing them and asking questions about how they feel about being mixed-race, their experience and dreams. She chose to work with this age group because teens today are more politically engaged, and they are our future. Takagi has worked with those subjects who lived in NY, NJ, Florida, Minnesota, and Japan so far. She is creating complex and whimsically self-costuming images of mixed-race life, its public and private faces, using her art as a tool to explore racial identity, race relations, public presentation of the self, and cultural norms.