Racial Renovations

Chapter 2 studies the affliction of feeling out of place, traversing questions of national belonging, domesticity, and the reverberations of American empire present in home decor. The chapter begins by discussing Isamu Noguchi, the world-renowned sculpture artist before turning attention on Joanna Gaines, a Texas-based TV personality most known for her role in HGTV’s Fixer Upper, a home renovation show. Teased for being half-Asian, both Gaines and Noguchi struggled with feelings of shame throughout their childhoods. As adults, they turned toward art and design to cope and escape, enacting racial renovation, an act of repurposing the racialized pain of past societal rejection, exclusion, or ostracism for the benefit of others’ potential comfort and belonging. Reparative at times, racial renovation can also be suspect and, as seen with Gaines, deeply implicated with whiteness and the Christian right.