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World Arts and Cultures graduate student Denise Uyehara’s solo show links together prejudice duri

Don’t judge Denise Uyehara based on the way she looks. The Japanese American performance artist-writer and UCLA student will be the first to say assumptions based on appearance can be extremely destructive.

Known for tackling issues of race, gender and sexual identity in critically acclaimed solo works like “Headless Turtleneck Relatives” and “Hello (Sex) Kitty: Mad Asian Bitch on Wheels,” Uyehara opens her latest solo show, “Big Head,” at Highways Performance Space tonight. The woman Entertainment Weekly once named “Best Performance Artist” has created a multimedia production that compares the treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II with that of groups now often viewed as “the enemy:” Arab, Muslim and South Asian Americans.

The discrimination in “Big Head” goes beyond expected white versus ethnic boundaries to examine how prejudice has the potential to affect everyone. One section of the piece, which features narrative and clay animation video, was prompted by an Orange County hate crime committed by Japanese Americans against an Indian man and his family mistaken for Middle Easterners.

“I’m Asian American, originally from Orange County, so it hit home for me that we’re all very susceptible to being racist,” Uyehara said. “Regardless of who you are, why are you beating (other people) up?”

The internment of her great uncle Masamori Kojima during World War II and the letters he wrote during that time also helped Uyehara think about the mistreatment of Arab and Muslim Americans in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001.

“It was only a generation and a half, two generations ago that people were interned,” she continued. “For a long time, it was hard for me to relate, beyond intellectually, to the incarceration of Japanese Americans. But with recent events, it’s easy to remember what happened then and to think of how we can help those who are being incarcerated now.”

Ironically, “Big Head” was originally inspired by an Immigration and Naturalization Service document made public through the Freedom of Information Act years before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington D.C. A coalition of Japanese Americans and Arab Americans discovered the 1986 INS contingency plan that laid down guidelines to track, mark and possibly intern suspected terrorists in the U.S.

“They actually had a barracks set up in Oakdale, Louisiana,” Uyehara said.

In an effort to include the stories of other ethnic groups in the work, Uyehara at one point assumes the identity of former UCLA Daily Bruin editor-in-chief Edina Lekovic, a Muslim American whose ability had once been questioned by a Japanese American staff member. Uyehara questions the connections between internment camps, the U.S. Patriot Act and current infringements on American civil liberties.

“This whole ‘never again’ thing is really a joke because it’s happening over and over and over again,” Uyehara says while playing Lekovic’s character.

With the completion of “Big Head,” Uyehara now spends much of her time as an MFA graduate student in UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures, looking for ways to expand and build upon her ideas.

Despite all the critical acclaim she’s received over the last 10 years – a former “Writer on Site” artist-in-residence at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and a recipient of an AT&T “New Plays for the ’90s” grant among many other awards – she maintains a very practical attitude about her success, especially as a Japanese American.

“There’s a need for more people of color to be doing this work,” she said. “I’m one of many voices out there trying to get heard. It’s not like I’m not the only one.”

“Big Head” will be playing at Highways Performance Space at 1651 18th St., Santa Monica, Feb. 21, 22, 28, March 1 at 8:30 p.m. and March 2 at 2 p.m. $15 general admission, $13 students and seniors. For reservations, call (310) 315-1459. For more information, call (310) 453-1755 or visit deniseuyehara.com.