The Asian American Women's Association — AAWAA — is a local nonprofit organization dedicated to the visibility and documentation of Asian American women in the art world. Since 1989, AAWAA has grown in the Bay Area and across the nation to ensure that women artists of Asian heritage are fully represented in the arts.
Two women have played key roles in the foundation of this association. Flo Oy Wang and Betty Kano founded the organization to promote a community for Asian American women artists and to serve as an outlet of personal expression for those of Asian heritage and culture from the perspective of a woman.
AAWAA supports a range of media, including sculpture, painting, poetry, writing, visual arts and journalism. In addition to supporting Asian American women artists, the organization also provides education to traditional art museums and establishments on the underrepresentation of Asian American women artists in American art history, where they work to promote an open representation of such artists in mainstream galleries, publications, and museums.
AAWAA has impacted the Bay Area through many different programs and exhibitions. One of the most intriguing programs is called “A Place of Her Own,” which is designed to help women express their opinions on the question, “If you had a place of your own, what would it be?”
The program is modeled to give women the freedom of personal expression without the limitations brought on by parental or cultural training, such as the needs of women often being set aside; however, through this program, women can use the arts as a means of discovery, realization and expression while focusing solely on themselves.
This year AAWAA has developed the program into an exploratory creative workshop series open to the public. Asian American women of all artistic backgrounds are encouraged to join the workshop to focus on what is important to herself alone. The social service initiative of “A Place of Her Own” is to provide a safe nurturing environment for Asian American women to express their feelings without fear of cultural backlash, explore subconscious memories, cultivate intuition, and use these creative outlets as a means of healing powers.
Cynthia Tom, curator for the association, explained the main goal of these programs and of the organization by saying, “We are providing vehicles to showcase and document their work; growing community; and giving them permission to vocalize their ambitions, pain, frustrations and needs.”
AAWAA has featured many artists over the past 20 years. These artists have gone on to exhibit their art at museums such as the de Young and other local museums.
One such artist, MariNaomi spoke of her first experience with AAWAA. She said, “I first heard of AAWAA in 2005 or so, and I joined up immediately. I am half-Japanese, but I grew up in a very white area, plus the art scene I was a part of was predominantly Caucasian and male, so the idea of meeting other female Asian-American artists was intriguing to me.
“The ladies of AAWAA are so diverse with regard to mediums, experience and styles,” MariNaomi said. “It exposed me to a lot I wouldn't have otherwise been privy to. And they are so supportive of one another!”
Currently, the AAWAA is preparing for their latest show as a part of the Emerging Curators Program titled “Hungry Ghost: Yearning for Fulfillment” which features 38 local visual and literary artists. The show is based on The Hungry Ghost, a concept based in Buddhist and Taoist beliefs in which a lost soul is burdened by unmet needs and wanders looking for fulfillment. The ghost, driven by greed and desire is constantly roaming its surroundings, searching and feeding.
The artists were asked to interpret the culturally rich metaphor through various media — such as sculpture, photography, poetry, mixed media illustrations and essays. They expressed their answers to the questions: How do we crave acceptance and fulfillment? What feeds us? The major themes of the show are food and family, identity and isolation, consumption and compulsion.
Wei Ming Dariotis wrote a poem for the exhibit, called “White Snake Woman in San Francisco.” Wei Ming explained her time with the organization saying, “I've had a long association with AAWAA as an artist and organizer — over a decade now. To me, AAWAA is a powerful community of Asian American Women Artists of very diverse identities. Many, like myself, are of mixed heritage. We are queer, straight, married, wealthy, poor students, and from a variety of ethnic groups representing Asian American diversity. To me, AAWAA is an important home for my art. I often feel inspired to create art specifically for AAWAA exhibition, like the latest show, Hungry Ghost.”
More information about AAWAA can be found on their website at www.aawaa.net/.
