Biography

Ana Iwataki is a cultural historian, writer, and curator from and based in Los Angeles.  She is also a PhD candidate in Comparative Media and Culture at the University of Southern California. At USC, she is on the organizing committee for the Creativity, Theory, Politics research cluster. 

Her dissertation examines the cultural and spatial politics of 800 Traction, a former warehouse in the Downtown Los Angeles neighborhood now known as the Arts District where artists, many of them Japanese American, lived and worked until their eviction in 2018. Her interdisciplinary project draws on storytelling and community archives analyze and intervene in the urban processes that impact cultural memory.

She holds a BA in Art History from Pitzer College and MA in Curatorial Studies from the Sorbonne.

Education

  • MA Art History, Univ Paris IV Sorbonne, 2014
  • BA Art History, Pitzer College, 2011