This year’s Rubenstein Guest Artist transforms familiar imagery through animations, sculptures, light boxes, and murals.

Some moments pass by too quickly to truly absorb the nuances of their significance and the manifold reactions to them. Drawing from media, art history, and pop culture, German-Japanese American Artist Kota Ezawa, the Sidwell Friends School 2025 Daryl Reich P ʼ77, ʼ81, ʼ84 Rubenstein Guest Artist, has made a career of investigating the power of images by distilling memories of historical moments into their basic forms.

Take for example, the moment when the verdict from the infamous OJ Simpson murder trial was read or when Senator Kamala Harris asked Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh about government power and men’s bodies. Those moments were just that—moments—but in Ezawa’s graphically simplified animations, they come back alive and resonate more deeply. 

Whether through video animations, paper cutouts, sculptures, watercolors, or light boxes—“modern day stained glass windows,” he calls them—Ezawa’s remakes offer a meditation rather than commentary on his chosen subject matter.

Ezawa has described himself as a modern-day history painter of sorts—a maker of “moving paintings rather than videos with a beginning and an end”—and emphasizes his belief that making intuitive choices and experimenting with new ways to visually describe events, feelings, and language ultimately leads to unexpected places. He encouraged Sidwell students to entertain all ideas, because one never knows which will bring forth something “cool or surprising.” “We all need food and water, but I believe we need art more,” he said. “We can skip food for a day, but we need aesthetics to be fully human. Art is in the open; it infiltrates our lives every day.”

Ezawa—a self-proclaimed “pathological optimist” whose art has been exhibited around the world—told the audience that he enjoyed speaking with the students in the days leading up to his lecture and perusing the art they had created in emulation of his. “Since I am in the business of remakes, I found it wonderfully fitting that the students were making remakes of remakes,” he laughed.

Ezawa spoke about how a piece of art can change, depending on where and how it is being shown. His piece, Hand Vote, was originally created as a small-scale wooden tableau, depicting a group of people raising their hands to vote in what appears to be a town hall meeting. Later, it was recreated as an 18-foot-tall public art installation outside the Vancouver Art Gallery. “The original was only the size of a breadbox and it seemed almost like a gentle joke about democracy,” Ezawa explained. “But once it was recreated large-scale, it became more a celebration of democracy. Just by changing the size and setting, its meaning transformed.”

In his introduction of Ezawa, Aaron Brophy, Middle School art teacher and director of art exhibitions, explained how the exhibition’s title, Mehr Licht (More Light), applies to the works on display. Brophy, who has brought countless thoughtful exhibitions and lecturers to Sidwell Friends over the years, noted, “When we look at Kota’s work, we see many layers and metaphors in the exhibition’s title.” Hand Vote, which changed in size, location, and interpretation can be reinterpreted at a time many are discussing the future of US democracy.

Ezawa said that he is often asked if he is a political artist. “The word ‘politics’ actually comes from the Greek meaning ‘of citizens.’ Greek society was built around art so I believe that politics is actually an afterthought of art,” he explained. “So, no, I do not think I am a political artist, rather someone who describes events visually.”

Through his work, Ezawa draws attention to the emotional core of scenes that define the cultural narrative broadly. Commissioned by the San Francisco International Airport, Ezawa created Mondrian Meets the Beatles, a large-scale public art installation that combines a scene of The Beatles disembarking a plane overlaid with a composition of colored rectangles inspired by Piet Mondrian’s 1935 painting, Composition C. “I ended up adding the rectangles of color, Mondrian-style, because I thought the piece needed some lightness. People can be stressed in airports; I wanted to bring a sense of calm and joy,” Ezawa said. “And here’s a coincidence I learned later …The Beatles gave their last live performance in Candlestick Park in San Francisco, so this is another example of how art finds its context.”

In his closing remarks at the end of the Rubenstein Guest Artist Lecture, Head of School Bryan Garman said, “What we all need is more light, more art, more pathological optimism … and more Kota Ezawa.”

The annual Daryl Reich Rubenstein Guest Artist Program, generously funded by Lee Rubenstein and his children Beth Rubenstein ’77, Barton Rubenstein ’81, and Amy Rubenstein ’84, honors the memory of Lee’s late wife, Daryl. A passionate advocate for the arts, Daryl curated numerous exhibitions in the Washington DC region and at prestigious institutions, including the Smithsonian’s Max Weber: Prints and Color Variations. She also contributed extensively to leading art journals and authored the definitive catalogue raisonné of Max Weber’s graphic prints, published by the University of Chicago Press. Since its establishment in 1981, this program has welcomed over 40 nationally recognized artists to Sidwell Friends, enriching the lives of students, faculty, and the broader community.