Asian American Women Artists Association

06/12/2026

🔔 Announcing our membership system upgrade

Dear valued AAWAA Members, we're excited to announce that we've just upgraded our membership system to improve your experience on our website!

Please be patient as we make some final tweaks in the next couple of weeks. Members will now have an easier time signing up, updating your profile, and managing your membership.

If you experience any issues or have questions, please reach out at 📩[email protected]!

06/12/2026

🤗 Let us give a warm welcome to AAWAA’s newest addition to its Board of Directors, Ajaya Bhatnagar!

Ajaya (she/her) is a San Francisco–based mixed media artist and arts professional with a background in exhibition coordination, gallery administration, and community engagement. Her interdisciplinary practice incorporates painting and sculpture, and her work has been exhibited across the Bay Area. Alongside her visual art practice, she is a trained Bharatanatyam dancer with over 15 years of experience. Ajaya brings a strong foundation in creative direction, public engagement, and collaborative programming within the arts sector.

06/09/2026

📣 Calling all Members! Join us next week for our next Members Virtual Salon

📆 Wednesday, June 17 @ 5-7PM PT
🧑‍💻 Online via Zoom
🙋 Open to all *current* members

Come gather, mingle, and make magic with your fellow Asian American women and nonbinary artists! Join AAWAA's Members Virtual Salon — bringing together our brilliant creative community to share ideas, spark collaborations, and uplift one another. Hosted by Midori.

​Our salons are all about community and networking—a cozy, low-pressure space to meet new folks, swap resources, and recharge your artistic spirit. We’ll also have time to share current projects, explore creative connections, and discover ways to support each other’s growth.

Want to present your art or current projects to the group? Sign-up for a 5 minute slot through June 12. Spots are limited and first-come-first-serve.

RSVP and sign-up to present here:https://www.aawaa.net/aawaa-events

06/05/2026

👋 Say hello to the Artist Members interviewed in Pass It On - Episode 2: (left-to-right) Lydia Nakashima Degarrod, Nancy Hom, and Lenore Chinn!

Pass It On is an initiative to capture oral histories of AAWAA’s members to add to AAWAA’s archives. The purpose of this initiative is to create a space that encourages a variety of members in our community to engage in meaningful dialogues and to record these conversations over time to build a collective portrait of AAWAA. This program is our effort to steward the long-term representation of the artistic and cultural work of AAPI women artists and legitimize the value of these experiences and hxstories. The series was filmed and edited by fellow AAWAA Member Diana Chen.

🎬 Episode 2 is now live on AAWAA's website - https://www.aawaa.net/pass-it-on

05/09/2026

🎉 Happy Asian Pacific Heritage Month!

We're celebrating by publishing our digital Exhibition Catalog from last year's biennial exhibition - Brown Palms, Yellow Balms: Reinventing Caregivers of Color. Written by curator O.M. France Viana and designed by Phuan Khun. See all the artwork again and their significance in honoring Asian and Asian American women caregivers.

View the catalog here: https://www.aawaa.net/brownpalmsyellowbalms

See the 3D gallery tour here: https://somarts.org/wp-content/uploads/virtual-tour/APICC_2025_BPYB_Online/index.htm

Can brown palms and yellow balms cure the planet’s deepest wounds? The caregiver— she who opens a newborn's eyes and closes the eyes of the dying—remains overwhelmingly female and disproportionately a person of color. Fate casts Asian and Asian American women into a culture of service, entrapp...

04/30/2026

💔 It is with very heavy hearts that we share that our incredible co-founder, Flo Oy Wong, has passed on April 11 following some major health complications.

You can read her obituary here: https://www.eastbaytimes.com/obituaries/flo-oy-wong-sunnyvale/

Flo was beloved by all who met her. Everyone at AAWAA will miss her firebrand energy, outspokenness, curiosity, and warm encouragement. She always used her voice and organized when there was injustice. Over the years, she connected so many Asian and Asian American women artists, creating spaces for everyone to be proud of their own cultures and backgrounds and accepted for who they truly are so that each of us could pursue our passions and reach our full potential.

During her extraordinary career, Flo was a master of reinvention as an educator, artist at 40, curator, and later poet at 75. Her art has been exhibited throughout the US, most notably on Angel Island and at the Smithsonian as well as abroad in China. She published two art books with the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center - "70/30: 70 Years of Living, 30 Years of Art" (2008) and "Flo Oy Wong: The Whole Pie" (2013). On her 80th birthday in 2018, Flo published her book of poems, "Dreaming of Glistening Pomelos".

She was featured in interviews on the documentary AAWAA produced with Q***r Women of Color Media Arts Project and directed by Madeleine Lim, "The Worlds of Bernice Bing" (2013). Flo is captured on AAWAA’s oral history series "Pass It On: Birth of A Movement" (2022) along with fellow-co-founder Betty Nobue Kano and founding member Kim Anno telling stories from the organization’s beginnings.

In 2024, the Legacy mural at 723 Webster Street in Oakland Chinatown was painted by artist Desi Mundo based on Flo’s drawings of her family and their restaurant. Andi Wong produced two short documentaries about her - "Tales of the Tofu Goddess: The Artful Life of Flo Oy Wong" (2025), and "Drawn from Life: The Creative Legacy of Flo Oy Wong (2023)" with support from Contemporary Asian Theater Scene. In recent years, she enjoyed performing poetry with her late sister Nellie Wong and San Francisco Poet Laureate Genny Lim as The Last Hoisan Poets.

She continues to be such an inspiration to all our members and will be dearly missed. Her love and legacy shines and lives on in so many of us! 🌟

1st image: Portrait of Flo taken by her husband, Ed Wong.

2nd image: Flo (center) performs with The Last Hoisan Poets (with the late Nellie Wong on left) at the opening of In The Presence of: Collective Histories of The Asian American Women Artists Association exhibition at Berkeley Art Center on January 27, 2024. Photo credit: Minoosh Zomorodinia.

3rd image: AAWAA Members and staff pose with Flo (top row, 3rd from left) at her late sister Nellie Wong’s celebration of life on February 14, 2026 at Oakland Asian Cultural Center. Photo credit: Bob Hsiang

04/09/2026

🌷Spring Members Virtual Salon next week!

Come gather, mingle, and make magic with your fellow Asian American women and nonbinary artists! Bringing together our brilliant creative community to share ideas, spark collaborations, and uplift one another. Hosted by Midori.

📆 Monday, April 13 @ 5-7PM PT
👩🏻‍💻 Online via Zoom
Open to all *current* AAWAA Members
✉️ RSVP ➡ https://luma.com/mri28tlq

AAWAA’s salons are all about community and networking—a cozy, low-pressure space to meet new folks, swap resources, and recharge your artistic spirit. We’ll also have time to share current projects, explore creative connections, and discover ways to support each other’s growth.

Grab a drink, bring your curiosity, and join us for an inspiring evening of laughs, links, and possibility.

04/06/2026

AAWAA partnered with The Ruby () to co-present an inspiring Slide Slam 2026 during the last weekend of Women’s Herstory Month!

Congratulations again to the presenting artists:
- April Werle ()
- Bushra Gill ()
- Cat Gutierrez ()
- Gladys Lu
- Jennifer Lugris ()
- Kay Kang ()
- Melisa of MWY Pottery ()
- Sun Park ()
- VC Tang ()
- Yume Kim (.kim_poet)

Many thanks to our AAWAA volunteers for supporting this event:
- Arianne Omila ()
- Daniel Dao ()
- Dove Lain ()

Shout-outs to Melanie Elvena (AAWAA Programs & Communications Manager, ) for her event-planning prowess, Angela Han (AAWAA Board President, ) for emcee-ing, Peggy Lee (steward of The Ruby) for hosting, and Yuanyuan Zhu (Director of Galleries and Programs, Chinese Culture Center, ) for being our special guest!

📸 Photo courtesy of Nghiem.

04/01/2026

🚨🚨🚨 AAWAA Members - today is the last day to fill out the Membership Survey!

Your feedback will directly impact our membership offerings and programs in the future, and we truly want to hear from you. It should take no more than 5-10 minutes to complete. Check your inbox for the link.

All current members who complete the survey will also be entered into a drawing for $10 and $20 gift cards to Blick Art Materials!