Asian American Women Artists Association (AAWAA) is a nonprofit arts organization that supports and promotes the work of Asian American women artists in the visual, literary, and performing arts through activities such as art events, lectures, artists salons, and member exhibitions. [1]
Based in San Francisco, it was founded in 1989 by artists including Flo Oy Wong, Betty Kano, Moira Roth, and Bernice Bing. [1]
Kano and Wong were motivated to found the AAWAA after attending the 1989 national meeting of the Women's Caucus for Art, where they felt that Asian American women were heavily underrepresented, and by joining a project started by Moira Roth to create a collection of slides of artworks by women of color. [2] The first meeting was held at Kano's home in Berkeley in March of that year. [3]
In 2007, the organization formally incorporated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit. [3]
AAWAA's Speakers Bureau consists of artists, scholars, writers, and administrators who present at institutions regarding topics such as women's issues, Asian American issues, artists' process, and AAWAA programs. Members of the Speakers Bureau have lectured at numerous institutions in California.
Cynthia Tom (President), Shari Arai DeBoer (Secretary/Treasurer), Sigi Arnejo, Linda Inson Choy, Michelle Lee, Vinay Patel, and Pallavi Sharma.
Susan Almazol, Renee Baldocchi, Gracie Chidmat, Lori Chinn, Lydia Nakashima Degarrod, Natalie Gore, Nancy Hom, Anh-Hoa Thi Nguyen, Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, and Sue Tom.
Membership to the AAWAA is open to all, as either an artist member or an affiliate member. Notable members include Kathy Aoki, Bernice Bing, Lenore Chinn, Nancy Hom, Betty Kano, Dawn Nakanishi, Genny Lim, Isabelle Thuy-Pelaud, Canyon Sam, Valerie Soe, Flo Oy Wong, Wendy Yoshimura, and Katherine Westerhout.
Cheers to Muses is an anthology published by the AAWAA in 2007. The book compiles 77 works, including fine art, poetry, creative writing, and non-fiction work. The works are created by 64 Asian American women ranging in age from 14 to 85. [4]
Entering the Picture is a collection about contributions of feminists to American art. It is an interdisciplinary collection of essays by artists and scholars, many of whom were eyewitnesses to landmark events, relates how feminists produced vibrant bodies of art in Fresno and other locales where similar collaborations flourished. [5]
The Worlds of Bernice Bing is a documentary short film produced by the AAWAA, featuring the life and work of the lesbian Chinese American artist Bernice Bing. The film is directed by Madeleine Lim, executive artistic director of the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project [6]
In 2013, the film received the Audience Award at the Queer Women of Color Film Festival.
Local Invisibility, Postcolonial Feminisms talks about studies in gender, sexuality, and culture. It looks into postcolonial poetic and artistic work of four generations of female Asian American artists in the San Francisco Bay Area. [7] There is a chapter on the AAWAA (Asian American Women Artists Association).
This program aims to stress an Asian American Women lens to curation, to promote Asian American Women in the arts, from a curating perspective and also benefits the artists who are under represented and lack exposure. [8]
In 2015, in honor of its 25th anniversary, the AAWAA launched a campaign to create a large collective mural in San Francisco's Richmond District. [9]
The mural is to honor the contributions of women artists in the Asian-American and Pacific Islander community. It is a response to the increased racial tensions and vandalism, and to increase the visibility of Asian American female artists. [10] "Mural Muses" will be one of the large-scale murals in the Bay Area to honor Asian-American artists.
Melanie Elvena, programs manager at the AAWAA stated that the collaborative mural was another way to raise awareness for Asian-American women artists "in a space that has been traditionally male dominated." [11]
A Place of Her Own (PLACE) is an art-based program, first created in 2008 by the AAWAA director Cynthia Tom. It is dedicated to improving women's mental health and seeks to challenge issues like colonization, racism, forced migration, and gender oppression. [12] It is based around the question in Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own: "If you had a place of your own, what would it be?" The weekly workshops over the course of six months lead up to a professionally curated exhibition. PLACE is open to all women, regardless of art ability of experience, and uses various art mediums.
PLACE offers down to earth healing tools, that relieve stress while opening up our ability to access and trust our intuition. The work is designed to help release underlying patterns and old habits and their links to individual, family and cultural histories and patterns of dysfunction. In order to thrive and take ownership of our life's path, women must define what is important to them alone, practicing self love and self-care. [13]
The AAWAA and the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center (APICC) presented this art exhibition as part of the United States of Asian America Festival [14] opening at SOMArts Cultural Center from May 4–25, 2017. Shifting Movements features 40 artists working in various mediums, mostly from Asian Pacific American, African-American, and Latin-American backgrounds. [15] The exhibition honors the Japanese-American activist Yuri Kochiyama. Shifting Movements also featured oral history recordings, a public installation created by the community, and the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center online exhibition Folk Hero: Remembering Yuri Kochiyama Through Grassroots Art.
underCurrents & the Quest for Space features the space occupied by Asian America - socially, artistically and physically. It is a multidisciplinary arts exhibition that addresses topics such as "model minority", and challenges faced by Asian American society such as stereotypes, discrimination and invisibility. [16] It is a joined force with Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center (APICC).
Eating Cultures is a multi-disciplinary arts exhibition of artworks inspired by Asian American food and foodways. [17] Artists share stories of global fusion, and importance of food in Asian communities globally.
Hungry Ghosts exhibition uses the concept of "Hungry Ghosts", a common concept throughout many Asian cultures and religions, to explore the unsatisfied ghosts of the individual and collective historical struggles that continue to cast an effect the community. [18] It is co-presented by the Manilatown Heritage Foundation.
The exhibition took place on the 25th anniversary year of the AAWAA. It features the works of 38 AAWAA artists members, and highlights the diversity, creativity, and evolution of its artist community.
Agrarianaa: Art Inspired by APA Agricultural Roots is a multimedia exhibition featuring artists and farmers rooted in the history of Asian Pacific American agricultural crafts and legacies. The exhibition addresses topics including migrant labor, environmental activism, land and food sovereignty. It includes artists who talks about how a regenerative agricultural ecosystem can support into the resilient spaces for community. [19]
Jade Snow Wong was a Chinese American ceramic artist and author of two memoirs. She was given the English name of Constance, also being known as Connie Wong Ong.
The San José Museum of Art (SJMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum in downtown San Jose, California, United States. Founded in 1969, the museum holds a permanent collection with an emphasis on West Coast artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. It is located at Circle of Palms Plaza, beside Plaza de César Chávez. A member of North American Reciprocal Museums, SJMA has received several awards from the American Alliance of Museums.
Yuri Kochiyama was an American civil rights activist. Influenced by her Japanese-American family's experience in an American internment camp, her association with Malcolm X, and her Maoist beliefs, she advocated for many causes, including black separatism, the anti-war movement, reparations for Japanese-American internees, and the rights of political prisoners.
The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) Singapore is the curatorial division of LASALLE College of the Arts, dedicated to supporting innovative and emerging creative practices. Focusing on art and design from the present, it provides an active site for contemporary culture in Singapore. It comprises five galleries that span a total of 1,500 square metres, one of the largest spaces devoted to contemporary art in Singapore. It engages local and international audiences in critical viewing and discussion through a diverse programme of exhibitions, projects, publications and events.
Tyrus Wong was a Chinese-born American artist. He was a painter, animator, calligrapher, muralist, ceramicist, lithographer and kite maker, as well as a set designer and storyboard artist. One of the most-influential and celebrated Asian-American artists of the 20th century, Wong was also a film production illustrator, who worked for Disney and Warner Brothers. He was a muralist for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), as well as a greeting card artist for Hallmark Cards. Most notably, he was the lead production illustrator on Disney's 1942 film Bambi, taking inspiration from Song dynasty art. He also served in the art department of many films, either as a set designer or storyboard artist, such as Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Around the World in 80 Days (1956), Rio Bravo (1959), The Music Man (1962), PT 109 (1963), The Great Race (1965), The Green Berets (1968), and The Wild Bunch (1969), among others.
Lauro "Larry" Zarate Alcala was a well-known editorial cartoonist and illustrator in the Philippines. In 2018, he was posthumously conferred the National Artist for Visual Arts title and the Grand Collar of the Order of National Artists.
Kearny Street Workshop (KSW) in San Francisco, California, is the oldest multidisciplinary arts nonprofit addressing Asian Pacific American issues. The organization's mission is to produce and present art that enriches and empowers Asian Pacific American communities. Notable participants include author and Asian American studies scholar Russell Leong, playwright and author Jessica Hagedorn, author Janice Mirikitani, poet and historian Al Robles, and actor and filmmaker Lane Nishikawa.
The Asian American Arts Centre (AAAC) is a non-profit organization located in Chinatown in New York City. Founded in 1974, it is one of the earliest Asian American community organizations in the United States. The Arts Centre presents the ongoing developments between contemporary Asian & Asian American art forms and Western art forms through the presentation of performance, exhibitions, and public education. AAAC's permanent collection, which it has accumulated since 1989, contains hundreds of contemporary Asian American art works and traditional/folk art pieces. The organization also has an Artists Archive which documents, preserves, and promotes the presence of Asian American visual culture in the United States since 1945. This includes the East Coast, especially the greater New York area; the West Coast; and some artists in Canada, Hawaii, and overseas. The artists include Asian Americans producing art, Asian artists who are active in the United States, and other Americans who are significantly influenced by Asia. Pan-Asian in outlook, the Arts Centre's understanding of ‘Asia’ encompasses traditions and influences with sources ranging from Afghanistan to Hawaii.
Godzilla: Asian American Arts Network was a New York-based Asian American arts collective and support network established in 1990. Founding members Ken Chu, Bing Lee, Margo Machida, and others established Godzilla in order to facilitate inter-generational and interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration for Asian American artists and art professionals. The collective provided visibility in local and national exhibitions, developed press outreach strategies, published newsletters, and sponsored symposia on Asian American art. It was disbanded in 2001.
Lenore Chinn is an American artist best known for her American realist paintings and her queer activism. Chinn was a founding member of Lesbians in the Visual Arts and Queer Cultural Center (QCC) and served on the San Francisco Human Rights Commission. She is currently based in San Francisco, California.
Bernice Bing was a Chinese American lesbian artist involved in the San Francisco Bay Area art scene in the 1960s. She was known for her interest in the Beats and Zen Buddhism, and for the "calligraphy-inspired abstraction" in her paintings, which she adopted after studying with Saburo Hasegawa.
Miranda Bergman is a contemporary muralist and one of the seven women artists who in 1994 created the MaestraPeace mural, the largest mural in San Francisco, which covers The Women's Building.
Terry Acebo Davis is a Filipino American artist and nurse based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her art is thematically linked to her family and her origins as a Filipino American.
Flo Oy Wong is an American artist, curator, and educator, of Chinese-descent. She had co-founded the Asian American Women Artists Association (AAWAA) in San Francisco.
Madeleine Lim is a filmmaker, producer, director, cinematographer and LGBTQ activist. She is the founding Executive Director of the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project (QWOCMAP), and an adjunct professor of film studies at the University of San Francisco. Lim is also a co-founder of SAMBAL and the US Asian Lesbian Network in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Betty Nobue Kano is a Japanese painter, curator and lecturer at San Francisco State University and New College of California, teaching the 332 Japanese American Art and Literature class. She is notable for exhibiting her work in nearly 200 regional, national and international galleries and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco.
Margo Machida is an American art historian, curator, cultural critic, and artist.
Shaghayegh Cyrous is an Iranian-born American artist and curator based in San Francisco. Her interactive time-based investigations, participatory projects, and video installations have been said to "create a poetic space for human connections."
Cindy Shih is a visual artist living and working in San Francisco. Her work is strongly rooted in traditional techniques and principles, including Chinese literati painting, Venetian plasterwork, landscape painting, and realism, although producing thoroughly modern pieces. One of her prominent themes is exploring her personal narrative in a broad context.
Na Omi Judy Shintani is a Japanese American artist whose work focuses on storytelling and remembrance of people who were imprisoned, her initial focus being Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II. Shintani creates interactive displays to shine light on historical issues and create a space of transformation and healing along with teaching history through portraying personal experiences.
