Bruce Yonemoto has spent a lifetime exploring experimental cinema and video art and has developed a body of work that positions itself within the overlapping intersections of art and commerce.

His talent as a multimedia artist and ability to challenge conventions and tell stories through the eyes of those often seen as outsiders made him a natural choice for this spring’s Virginia A. Orndorff Artist-in-Residence at California State University, Northridge, said Samantha Fields, a professor in Department of Art and Design in the Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communications who coordinates the residency program.

“He works to bring representation to into the discourse in really creative and innovative ways, ways that I think will appeal our students and inspire their work,” Fields said. “The content of his work is profound. Some of the work that he’s made deals with found footage and imagery, putting them together is this kind of postmodern pastiche method. He was kind of like an early sample artist and I think that’s really interesting to our students.”

Bruce Yonemoto

Yonemoto, whose residency at CSUN begins this month and lasts through the end of the spring semester in May, said he was looking forward to his residency at Northridge.

“I am really impressed by how big and diverse the program is at CSUN,” he said. “It’s really impressive what they are doing. I am really excited to work with the different programs in the art department. There is a lot of talent in the department, and I hope that they can learn from me and my experiences.”

The 15-week Virginia A. Orndorff Artist-in-Residence program debuted last year and was established to inspire and enhance opportunities for students. It was created by Chris Orndorff in honor of his wife, a 2000 CSUN graduate who had a passion for the visual arts. Virginia Orndorff worked more than 15 years in the marketing department of a bank before launching a career as a photographic artist.

University officials asked a panel of Los Angeles-based arts professionals to anonymously nominate artists for the program. The nominees were asked to submit applications, which were then weighed by committee made up of members of CSUN’s art department.

“When his name was nominated, I thought we could only dream that he would submit an application, he’s such a respected and gifted artist,” Fields said.  “It is such a wonderful opportunity to work and learn from an artist of his caliber.”

Yonemoto, who has taught at the University of California, Irvine, is a video and digital media installation artist, educator, writer and curator. Many of his works from the mid-1970s into the 1980s were done in collaboration with his brother, Norman, who died in 2014.

The Yonemotos have been honored with numerous awards and grants, including from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Film Institute, The Rockefeller Foundation and the Maya Dean Award for Experimental Film and Video. Their work was subject of major surveys and retrospectives, including at the Long Beach Museum of Art, Japanese American Museum, the Tate Modern in London, England, and the Anthology Film Forum in New York.

Since the late 1980s, Bruce Yonemoto’s solo work has been exploring experimental cinema and video art within the context of installation, photography and sculpture. He has had solo exhibitions at the NTT InterCommunication Center in Tokyo, Japan; the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Penn.; the St. Louis Art Museum, the Hong-Gah Museum in Taipei, Taiwan; and the Whitney Museum in New York City.

Yonemoto will be artist-in-residence for the 2026 spring semester and will be working out of a room near the entrance of the CSUN Art Galleries, which are located in the art complex at the northern end of campus. The room has windows that will allow passersby to see the artist at work. The windows are equipped with blinds, so he can lower them if he does not want to be disturbed.

Faculty and students across mediums in the department are already working with him on a project inspired by Bruce and Norman Yonemoto’s childhood game of role playing the comic strip Flash Gordon.

“He’s recreating that play as a form of cosplay, which is a direct reference to Japanese cosplay,” Fields said. “The plan is to recreate Bruce and his brother, Norman, playing on the playground where his brother would be Flash, who is white, and Bruce would play Ming, who in the movies would be played by a white actor in yellow face.

“Bruce used to climb to then top a slide on the playground and make his proclamations about being merciless,” she said. “He asked us if we could purchase a slide for this project. I asked him, ‘why make a purchase when we can build it?’ So, that’s what we’re doing, our students have already begun working with Bruce to build that slide. It’s going to be amazing.”