Baseball, unlike most sports, has a way of being a mirroring of, or metaphor, to American and Western history. Imperialism, immigration, racism, the rise of celebrity, the rise of personal self-enhancement, gambling, drugs, fashion, you name it. Baseball has this way, even as its popularity on the field as waned, of being reflective of the decades we have lived and the modern times we are in. I find Canadian artist Kellen Hatanaka’s approach to baseball so poetic and historic, and his new show, Everything Gon’ Be Alright This Morning, that is a powerful recreation of elements of the Vancouver Asahi Baseball team, the Japanese-Canadian baseball team of amateur and semi-professional players that was based in Vancouver from 1914 to 1941, to be of this understanding of how the sport is intertwined with culture and politics. He uses the baseball and the proud nature of this team to show what was lost due to Japanese internment, which according to history records, “Some 21,000 Japanese Canadians were taken from their homes on Canada’s West Coast, without any charge or due process. Beginning 24 February 1942, around 12,000 of them were exiled to remote areas of British Columbia and elsewhere.”
So how does baseball fit into this. Baseball, oddly, for all the minor changes that have been made in recent years, is relatively the same sport as it was over 150 years ago. It’s relative sameness makes it an appropriate marker of time as it can be relatable. The commonality of the sport allows for us to use it as a metaphor, something constant, something that is strict where history can change as we find the voices that make it more complete. This why the sport fascinates the likes of so many, why writers love to write about it, painters to paint it, the history books to showcase photos of Jackie Robinson or Babe Ruth and now Shohei Ohtani. Baseball is engrained in our western world, and Hatanaka’s work reflects this. —Evan Pricco
https://thelangham.ca/langham-art-gallery/